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2002-03-21 SP (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) QUEENSBURY PLANNING BOARD MEETING SPECIAL MEETING MARCH 21, 2002 7:00 P.M. MEMBERS PRESENT CRAIG MAC EWAN, CHAIRMAN CATHERINE LA BOMBARD, SECRETARY ROBERT VOLLARO JOHN STROUGH CHRIS HUNSINGER RICHARD SANFORD, ALTERNATE MEMBERS ABSENT LARRY RINGER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR-CHRIS ROUND ZONING ADMINISTRATOR-CRAIG BROWN TOWN COUNSEL-MILLER, MANNIX, SCHACHNER & HAFNER-MARK SCHACHNER STENOGRAPHER-MARIA GAGLIARDI SITE PLAN NO. 40-2001 TYPE: UNLISTED RICHARD SCHERMERHORN PROPERTY OWNER: SANDRA & MARTIN CECH AGENT: NACE ENGINEERING, VAN DUSEN & STEVES & JONATHAN LAPPER ZONE: RR-3A LOCATION: INTERSECTION OF BAY AND MOON HILL ROADS APPLICANT PROPOSES SAND AND GRAVEL EXTRACTION ON 6.3 ACRES OF A 10.31 ACRE SITE WITH RECLAIMED LAND TO BE USED FOR PROPOSED SUBDIVISION. MINING, EXTRACTION, MINERAL/GRAVEL IS SUBJECT TO REVIEW AND APPROVAL BY THE PLANNING BOARD IN ACCORDANCE WITH SECTION 179-15 AND 179-64 OF THE ZONING CODE. ADIRONDACK PARK AGENCY NYS DEC MINING & SPDES STORMWATER PERMITS WARREN CO. PLANNING BOARD: 10/10/01 TAX MAP NO. 48-1-13.21 LOT SIZE: 10.31 ACRES SECTION: 179-15, 179-64 JON LAPPER & TOM NACE, REPRESENTING APPLICANT, PRESENT MRS. LA BOMBARD-And the public hearing back on October 23 was tabled, and there is one this rd evening. STAFF INPUT Notes from Staff, Site Plan No. 40-2001, Richard Schermerhorn, Meeting Date: March 21, 2002 “Project Description: Applicant proposes a mining and land reclamation project on a 10.3 acre parcel. Approximately 5.3 acres will be affected by this project. Criteria for considering a Site Plan according to Section 179-38 of the Town of Queensbury Zoning Ordinance: 1. Does the proposed project comply with the requirements of the Zoning Ordinance? The project, as proposed, is an allowable land use in the Rural Residential district. 2. Will the proposed use be in harmony with the intent of the ordinance, specifically, could the location, character and size of the proposed use increase the burden on the supporting public services and facilities? The project is allowable in this zoning district and it does not appear that there would be any appreciable increased burden on the supporting public services. 3. Will the proposed use create public hazards with regards to traffic, traffic congestion or the parking of vehicles and/or equipment or be otherwise detrimental to the health, safety or general welfare of the persons residing or working in the neighborhood or the general welfare of the town? 1 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) The project will present an increase in the truck traffic in this area for the duration of the mining operation. The applicant proposes the installation of informational signage along Moon Hill Road to notify the public of the potential truck traffic. 4. While considering any benefits that might be derived from the project; Will the project have any undue adverse impact on the natural, scenic, aesthetic, ecological, wildlife, historic, recreational or open space resource of the town or Adirondack Park or upon the ability of the public to provide supporting facilities and services made necessary by the project? The project will involve the clearing of approximately 5.3 acres of land and the removal of approximately 200,000 cubic yards of material. There may be a historic concern on the site as outlined by Dr. Marilyn VanDyke in her January 9, 2002. Minimal impacts on the ability of the public to provide supporting facilities and services are anticipated. The following general standards were considered in the staff review of this project: The location, arrangement, size, design and general site compatibility of buildings, lighting and signs. This project does not include any construction, lighting or signage. The adequacy and arrangement of vehicular traffic access and circulation, including intersections, road widths, pavement surfaces, dividers and traffic controls. The location of the haul road appears to be suitably located. The location, arrangement, appearance and sufficiency of off-street parking and loading. The onsite traffic pattern will allow all vehicles to enter and exit the site appropriately. The adequacy and arrangement of pedestrian traffic access and circulation, walkway structures, control of intersections with vehicular traffic and overall pedestrian convenience. There is no need for pedestrian access to this site. The adequacy of stormwater drainage facilities. The proposed stormwater management plan appears to adequately address the necessary design criteria. The adequacy of water supply and sewage disposal facilities. No facilities are needed for this project. The adequacy, type and arrangement of trees, shrubs and other suitable plantings, landscaping and screening constituting a visual and/or noise buffer between the applicants and adjoining lands, including the maximum retention of existing vegetation and maintenance, including replacement of dead or deceased plants. The current plan has been revised to increase the perimeter buffering from 50 feet to 100 feet. The stormwater pond in the southeastern portion of the site has been relocated to a more central location to minimize land clearing. The project plans call for revegetation of the “pit” banks as well as additional plantings to supplement the existing growth. The adequacy of fire lanes and other emergency zones and the provision of fire hydrants. The haul road will be sufficient for any emergency vehicle, if necessary. The adequacy and impact of structures, roadways and landscaping in areas with susceptibility to ponding, flooding and/or erosion. The stormwater management plan addresses these items. Parcel History (construction/site plan/variance, etc.): None applicable Staff comments: The proposed project is an allowable land use within the Rural Residential zoning district. The revised information submitted in response to the October 23, 2001 tabling resolution appears to be responsive to the 2 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) concerns raised at that time. The land clearing associated with this application would be consistent with that which might be related to a three-lot subdivision in this district. The earthwork, however, is more than that which might normally be linked to residential development; therefore, it is subject to the site plan review. The adverse impacts on the surrounding residential uses may be somewhat mitigated by the 100 foot wide buffer area surrounding the project site and the fact that the “life” of the mine should be relatively short. However, the effects of the truck traffic and potential audible impacts should be considered. SEQR Status: Type: Unlisted” MR. MAC EWAN-When we get to the portion of the public hearing tonight, anyone who wants to speak, we’re going to take it off the sign-in sheet. So if you care to speak this evening, please get up and sign that sheet, and we’ll take them as people signed in here tonight. I’m guessing this is going to be a rather lengthy meeting tonight. So when we do get to the public hearing portion, we have received a lot of letters regarding this application. We are not going to read all of the letters into the record. However, we will announce the names of everyone who did write a letter regarding this application. We’ll read off those names. So if you’re here tonight, and you feel inclined to want to read your letter, by all means, you’re welcome to do so. We would also ask you to keep your comments brief, and if we’ve already touched on something as a Board that’s of your concern, and you feel that you need to re-address it, that’s fine. You can do that as well. I’ll turn it over to you. MR. LAPPER-Good evening. For the record, Jon Lapper, Tom Nace, Rich Schermerhorn and Shelly Johnston. Shelly is a traffic engineer from Creighton Manning in Albany. I’d like to make some preliminary comments, and then I’m going to ask Tom to walk everybody through the changes that we’ve made on the plan since we were before the Board the last time, then I’d like to ask Shelly to go through her traffic analysis, and then Rich will make some comments, and then we’ll listen to the public and respond. It’s obvious to us, in anticipation of this meeting, reading the letters to the newspaper and the letters that people have sent in to the Town, that there are people in the vicinity who are very concerned about this project. Both Rich and I live very close to this area. We’ve very familiar with this area, and we hope that by going through the details, that some members of the public can be satisfied that this is not going to negatively impact their lives or their homes. In general, I think that people are affected by the fact that there is a large mining operation by a company called Fane on Dream Lake Road, just north of where we are, and that is a completely different kind of operation than what we’re talking about here. We view this as a grading operation, because we’ve got a very hilly area that we don’t believe is suitable for development the way it is, and it’s in the rural residential area with single family homes on large lots, but Rich proposes, when this is done, with a maximum excavation time of five years proposed, Rich would build two single family homes on five acre lots each which would be very consistent with what’s in that area. Tom Nace has prepared, in response to our discussion last time, some line of sight drawings that show what the property would look like after it’s graded, and we’re proposing to bring it down to be generally at the same level as the road. So it would just be flat property in the center for the two houses and their front and rear yards, and most importantly what the Chairman and other members of the Board were asking for last time was to reduce the size of the operation, and we’ve done that significantly, going from 220,000 cubic yards to 150,000, which is a decrease of about a third, and voluntarily increased the buffer from the 50 feet required by Code to 100 feet. The few houses that surround it have pretty significant wooded areas between their houses and the end of their property. So in most cases we’re talking about 200 feet of trees between the grading and clearing area here to adjacent residences. We’re talking about an operation that what we’ve proposed for the Board to consider is Monday through Friday, just during business hours, and Saturday morning, when most people in the area would be at work, and in terms of the truck traffic, we’re talking about one truck, one dump truck at a time. Shelly’s report being conservative considered the possibility of four truck trips an hour at peak hour, which would be two in and two out, and Rich would just have one loader on the site. So this is just one loader and a bulldozer at times to do the grading or the reclamation work to create two building lots of five acres each, slowly over perhaps a five year period. There would be one driveway in and out, and the operation would be behind 100 feet of trees. So you won’t be looking at from the neighbors or from anyone driving on the road, and the few trucks going up and down Bay Road, Shelly will get into that, but Bay Road, of course, is one of the main travel corridors in the Town, and Shelly has studied this, and we don’t believe that traffic is going to be an impact. The neighbors have raised stormwater issues. We’ve met with Warren County Soil & Water Conservation Department and they’re satisfied. The Town engineer has reviewed this, and they have issued a letter, after Tom agreed to some additional changes that they proposed. They’re now satisfied. I think that noise is a legitimate issue to discuss, and we believe that by increasing the buffer to 100 feet, and just the nature of the operation with one loader and one dump truck at a time that, in an area where you have large lots and houses that are spaced out pretty well, pretty far from where we are here, that noise is not going to be a significant impact, but most importantly when people think of a mine, you think of something like Fane, a big pit that is a scar after the operation is done, and because what we’re talking about here is to just bring it down to level with the grade of the road, when we’re done, we’re just going to have two houses that are very similar to what’s in the neighborhood, and we think that distinguishes it. Obviously, there will be a period where there will be an operation going on to remove the sand and gravel. Rich is a very experienced, well known developer in Town, and what he’s proposing to do is to take the sand and gravel and to drive it down Bay Road to his office park, which is a very positive development for the Town. He’s got the day care building that’s going to open up in the next couple of weeks, and we expect to be in before the Planning 3 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) Board with a couple of more office buildings in the next few months. That’s been very well received, but that site requires fill, and rather than truck it from farther away, this is a proposal to be able to bring it from just a couple of miles up Bay Road, which would reduce the impact on the Town, and at the same time create two level building lots that Rich can develop and sell. I guess I’ll turn it over to Tom. MR. NACE-Thank you. Okay. Just working with the plans, as Jon described, basically one of the most significant changes we have made, in response to the previous Planning Board concerns, was to bring the buffers in to 100 feet. That moves all the grading in to a more centralized area in the project. We now have 100 feet on all of the buffers. In the back here we actually have more than 100 feet, just by the nature of the existing grade, and we also, we met with two of the neighbors, the ones located here and here, and they have concern regarding the visibility of the area that we were proposing for stormwater management, which was up in here originally, the visibility of that from Bay Road and the clearing, not having enough buffer from Bay Road to buffer the cleared area. MR. SANFORD-Excuse me. Is it possible for that to be projected onto the screen, or is it too big? MR. NACE-No. To be projected? MR. SANFORD-Yes, so that the people can see it. MR. NACE-I think it’s too big. Now that we know that you’ve got the facilities, we’ll end up, from now on we’ll prepare disks that we can project through your computer, but unfortunately we don’t have those tonight. What we have done is we’ve moved that stormwater basin back into the site, more centralized, and we’ve increased the buffer out here on Bay Road from 75 feet to 190 feet, so that the edge of the clearing now is 190 feet away from Bay Road. There’s also, since that area in here, if you’ve looked at it, is mostly hardwood grove, some of it is a little bit sparse, we’ve proposed planting some in-fill of white pine in there, which would be typical of what occurs on the rest of the site, planting those in-fill white pine to help provide a lower screening and more of a buffer. To help visualize what really is going on on this site, with the proposed grading, we’ve prepared cross sections that you asked for to illustrate what things are really going to look like when they’re completed, and this is drawn to scale. It’s not exaggerated vertically or horizontally. So it’s drawn to the exact scale of what’s going to occur, and there are three different sections. Section One, the top section, is drawn pretty much perpendicular to Bay Road, right up through the middle of the site, and on this section you’ll see, coming off Bay Road, we have now a much greater buffer. We have that 190 feet of buffer to the edge of the clearing, then we have our stormwater basin in here, and that basin is located in an area that’s a natural depression now, and all of, any runoff that’s generated on this site goes into that depressed area and just sits there. I’ll speak, in a minute, about the soils testing we did, but that’s a natural depression that occurs in the soil. The present runoff from the site sits there, if there is any, filters down into the soil, and that’s what we’re proposing for stormwater management from the finished site, but as you can see from this cross section, the existing grade goes up fairly high, and comes back down to the low area off of Bay Road, and what we’re simply doing is coming in here and taking the top of this existing mound off and tapering it to back of the site, or back in here, tapering back into the existing grade, and from there it’ll be naturally down to the property line, which, in this particular location, the property line is about 250 feet away from the edge of any clearing. Section Number Two was taken to show the most severe banks, or the most severe slopes that’ll be left on the site, and that section is cut down perpendicular to this cut slope in here, traverses across the middle of the excavation, and then traverses back up the other cut slope on the other side, and as you can see, with the Town grading requirements, we’re limited to a 30% slope, and that’s pretty mild, as you can see illustrated here. Then the third section is drawn to help show what the proximity of it looks like to the two nearest residences. This section is drawn directly through the nearest residence out on Bay Road and back through the nearest residence up on Moon Hill Road, and that section, as you can see, the existing house up on Moon Hill Road is right here. It’s approximately 200 feet, in fact about 215 feet, away from the edge of any clearing. There’s only a very gentle slope going down, and then it’s relatively level across the majority of the site, and coming out the other side to Bay Road, we have the existing house on Bay Road, which is here, and we have a buffer, in this instance, from the house to the limit of any clearing. I believe it’s 145 feet. We coordinated with the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District regarding the reclamation plan for the site. They reviewed our seeding mixture, and in fact said that our seeding mixture was probably more than they would have initially recommended in the way of quality seed mixture. They did recommend we change the specs a little bit to make them more clear and distinct for whoever’s doing the seeding operation to understand and we will do that, but with the reclamation, we have made a few changes since you saw the plan last, and one was to add some pine trees to these slopes to help re-vegetate the slopes in something other than just grass. They’ll eventually provide better and more ground cover and more buffering on the slopes. We’ve also, as I said before, we’ve added the pine trees out in here to provide an in-fill to the existing buffer, and, as you can see here, as we’ve described, the site really is generated to produce two building lots and provide each of the houses with a reasonable, flat yard area. As I spoke before, one of the things that you asked at our previous meeting was to look at the soils and verify that the soils were adequate and we weren’t going to run into any groundwater problems. We did go out with a backhoe, and in the most critical areas, dug a couple of test pits. One of them we dug here in the very lowest part of the site, down where we’re going to have our stormwater infiltration. We dug one here and one over here, just to make sure that the soils in that area were consistent. They’re a very nice, medium sand. There is no groundwater or evidence of seasonal high groundwater to a depth of 10 to 12 feet in that area, and that’s the 4 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) very lowest area, and it’s well below the bottom of our excavation up in here. The elevation down here is, existing elevation is approximately 84. So the bottom of those test pits is 74, 72 feet. The bottom of our excavation up in here is 96. So that’s at least 14 feet that we went down below where we’re going to be with this part of the excavation. We’ve added operational notes, and I think Jon covered most of this in his comments, but we have added operational notes to the drawings that specify what the existing equipment, or what the equipment will be on site, that it will be limited to a backhoe, loader, bulldozer and dump trucks, that the activity on the site will consist simply of extraction and hauling of fill and will not include any processing of fill, that the hours of operation will be restricted to eight a.m. to five p.m. weekdays and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturdays, and that no activity will be permitted on Sundays. As I mentioned, we have contacted the Soil and Water Conservation, and received their comments. I think you’ve got copies of those at this point. Okay. One of the other concerns that was voiced was the location of the residential driveway. At the last time we were here, this westernmost driveway was located approximately 100 feet to the west. We’ve moved that over, and re-done the grading in here to provide additional sight distance for that driveway on Moon Hill Road. Also, C.T. Male had had some concerns regarding the Hall Road. We had addressed those. It’s 24 feet wide. I think in their last comment letter that you’ve received they asked that, in addition to that 24 feet, if we couldn’t provide a couple of feet of gravel shoulder on each side, and we can certainly accommodate that, and I think that pretty much summarizes the changes. MR. LAPPER-Now I’m going to ask Shelly to go through the traffic study. SHELLY JOHNSTON MS. JOHNSTON-I’ve prepared a three page letter report. I believe the Board has a copy of that. I’d basically like to do a summary, or just a synopsis of that letter report. Does the Board have a copy, or do you need a copy? Okay. Basically, the traffic impacts associated with this project relate to the number of trucks that would be required to haul the approximately 150,000 cubic yards of material off the site. The excavated material will increase in volume as it’s excavated from the site. We’ve done an analysis based on, or an evaluation based on 172,000 cubic yards of material, and recognizing that the life of the mine, as indicated by Staff, is approximately three to five years, and again, based on the general operation notes that are on the Nace Engineering plan, recognizing that there’ll be no hauling on Sundays, taking out holidays and days of non-production or non-activity, we’ve estimated a potential for working 285 days per year, and we looked at an average capacity of 18 cubic yards per truck, to get us to an average of nine trucks per day entering and exiting this site, a potential of an average of nine trucks per day entering and exiting this site. As the Board knows, the traffic evaluation or traffic analysis is based on hourly traffic volumes. So accounting for peak activity at the site, we’ve estimated that the peak number of truck trips per hour could be as many as four. We then looked at the capacity of the adjacent roads, namely Bay Road and Moon Hill Road. We looked at, conducted a site visit, measured the width of the road, looked at the traffic volumes that we’ve counted on Bay Road. There’s approximately 6300 vehicles per day on Bay Road. That is roughly approximately 630 in a peak hour, both directions. In comparison, the capacity of a road such as Bay Road is more than 3,000 vehicles per hour. So there is ample capacity, there is a sufficient reserve capacity. The volume to capacity ratio right now is approximately 20%. The number of trucks that would be added to the adjacent streets, the trucks are going to come out onto Moon Hill, take a right onto Bay Road. We’re only going to be adding approximately four trips during that peak hour. It’s not going to appreciably change the volume to capacity ratio. It will still be about 20%. The volume of traffic on Bay Road will still be about 20% of the ultimate capacity of that road. We also looked at site distance, both site distance exiting the Hall Road onto Moon Hill Road, and sight distance as you approach Bay Road from Moon Hill Road. When you look to the right on Moon Hill Road from this site, in order to take a left turn out of this site, the sight distance looking to the right is approximately 500 feet. There are curb warning signs further to the west on Moon Hill Road, with advisory speed panels of 30 miles per hour. The sight distance that’s appropriate, or the design standard for 30 miles per hour is approximately 400 feet. We have 500 feet of sight distance. As you look to the left, you would approach the stop sign intersection at Bay Road. We also looked at the sight distance looking left from Moon Hill Road along Bay Road, in order to take a right hand turn onto Bay Road. That sight distance is approximately 550 feet, or excuse me, 750 feet, and as you’re approaching Moon Hill Road southbound on Bay Road, that stopping sight distance is similar. It’s about 750 feet. It’s more than sufficient for travel speeds of 50 miles per hour. We also noted, while we were at the site, there are vehicles similar in characteristics to the ones that will be used to haul the material in and out of the site. The new fire station, as you know, that’s up the road, has similar travel characteristics. There’s school buses. There’s plows. The road is being used now, those roads are being used now by similar vehicles with similar operating characteristics. So based on the number of vehicles that would be generated by the site and how long the life of the mine is, and given the characteristics of the amount of traffic that are on those adjacent highways, it’s our opinion that those roads can adequately handle the traffic and those movements can be made in and out of the site and on and off Bay Road safely. RICH SCHERMERHORN MR. SCHERMERHORN-Rich Schermerhorn, for the record. I know there’s a lot of opposition to this proposal, and we’re obviously here tonight to discuss it, and I tried coming up with a plan to scale it back somewhat from the last meeting. I have read all the letters that people have written in, and a lot of them seem to be the noise, the dust, and the traffic. Very few people have mentioned the aesthetics of the hill, and 5 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) I went out there again today on my lunch hour and I went to the base of the steepest part of it, and I kept trying to say to myself, how could I possibly develop this without possibly taking as much of the fill that’s proposed at this time, and I looked at it and I looked at it, and to get driveways that would be somewhat acceptable to a family, it would be very difficult. I don’t know how many people have actually gone and looked at the site, but that may also explain possibly why it’s been on the, for sale for quite some time. I will, after obviously we go to open it to the public, I’m still open for suggestions from the public. I’m here to work with them. I’ve never, any of the projects I’ve done, I haven’t worked against the people, I’ve tried to work with them. Honestly, I didn’t think there’d be such a, well, after the first meeting, you know, when the letters started coming in, and people were talking to me, I didn’t think that it would escalate to this size, because I honestly thought that I would do a good job, and we’d have, you know, two nice residential houses on five acre building lots, which I’m very confident that I’ll be able to sell very quickly, because there’s not many lots in the Town of Queensbury where you could get in excess of an acre today, and here I can offer five acres, and a couple of the comments were the neighbors were concerned that, is Mr. Schermerhorn going to put apartment buildings in. He seems to be covering our landscape of Queensbury with apartments. Well, I’m proposing residential, two homes here, and I have indicated to a couple of people I met with that I would offer to put deed restrictions in. I would restrict it to the size of the house, so that we know that they’re going to be fairly decent sized homes. I’ve offered to put a bond up. Some of the concerns in the letters was, well, what happens if something happens to me? Are we going to be looking at another eyesore? Some of the comments in the letters were about my Hunterbrook Apartments and the devastation of the hill. If people could just think back a little bit, when I purchased the land for the Hunterbrook Apartments that’s on the corner of Blind Rock and Bay, that was a piece of land that someone had started and more or less abandoned it, and I did clean it up. There were no trees to begin with there, but I guess that’s it for now, and I’m just saying that I’m still open and will work with people if we can find something, a happy medium. Thank you. MR. LAPPER-Any questions of the Board at this time? MR. MAC EWAN-Robert, we’ll start with you. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. I guess I’m just going to go down the questions that I prepared while I was reviewing this, and I’ll just go down them quickly, and you can give me whatever answers there are. First of all, I’d like to know what the basis or the precedent, either one, for DEC holding up the mining permit. Is this business at usual for them, that they don’t issue a mining permit until we, at the Planning Board, have either approved or denied an application? MR. LAPPER-DEC is considering, we’ve asked them to consider whether or not this requires a mining permit, because when it’s a grading operation associated with a construction project, there was just one that this Board approved in the last few months on Glen Lake. There was a project, obviously smaller scale, but it was associated with a residential development, and that is an exemption from the DEC regulations if it is for construction of houses. So they’re considering that, and we’ll know shortly whether or not it requires a permit, and if it does require a permit, we’ll go forward at that point. MR. VOLLARO-I guess my next question, which I wasn’t planning to ask, but I will ask now. Had you come in for just a subdivision, plain old subdivision, and DEC does not get involved because the subdivision has a building component with it. How did we get to this mining position, if that’s a fact? MR. LAPPER-Rich came in and talked to the Planning Staff about the project, and he could have just said this was going to be a two or three lot subdivision, and this is what we have to do, but because it’s more than six feet of excavation, that’s when, under the Town Code, you look at it as site plan review, when it’s more than six feet. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. So it’s a Town generated requirement, then? MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. VOLLARO-That’s where we got, that’s how we got to that. Okay. MR. LAPPER-And Rich also wanted to be very upfront that it was both, obviously, the outcome is going to be, sell two house lots and probably build two houses. That’s what he does, but also to remove the fill and use it on the other property. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. Do we have a response to Marilyn VanDyke’s letter of January 9? Has anybody th come up with anything to that? She issued a historic statement on that, a possible historic content to that site. MR. LAPPER-We, Tom has been in touch with an archeologist that we’ve used in the past, and we would, just like with Home Depot, we just did a Phase IA. We’ll do the same thing here, and, you know, we’ll have that in another month. We’ve learned, in investigating the site, that the northern part of the site was previously excavated for some sort of a sand and gravel operation in the second half of the last century. So 6 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) it’s unlikely that you’d find anything of significance there because it’s already been excavated, but for the record, it’s just better to go through that, to have it done. MR. MAC EWAN-By the same token, you might find something on the other half of the site. MR. LAPPER-Right, and that’s why you look. So we will do that. MR. VOLLARO-I just have a question concerning the present property owners, Sandra and Martin Cech. Where do they live at the present time? MR. SCHERMERHORN-They live in Vermont. MR. VOLLARO-They live in Vermont. Okay. Thank you. Other than the seeding comments, because most of Soil and Water’s comments, their letters and so on, really pertain to seeding primarily, do they have any other comments at all, other than what they wrote, in terms of the seeding recommendations? MR. NACE-I’ll only say that if you look at the last paragraph, it says that “As stated in the field, it is our opinion at the District that your plans are well done and easily understood”. MR. VOLLARO-I saw that. I got that. MR. NACE-They felt that the stabilization would be more than adequate. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. MR. LAPPER-Bob, I just want to point out, again, that most of the time, when you’ve got somebody that qualifies to be called grading or mining, you’re digging a hole, because you don’t always have a hill to take down, and if you’re a commercial operation, you’re not going to stop when you get to ground level. You’re going to go in the ground as far down as it’s safe with trucks to get stuff out, because you’re trying to maximize your return. Because that was never the plan here, they’re not used to seeing a reclamation plan where you’re seeding somebody’s yard and building a house, and that’s why it was well received. MR. VOLLARO-Well, I think that, you know, from a technical point of view, that the documentation is certainly adequate. Now, the location of nearby sand and gravel pits, the ones that we’ve seen from the air, there’ve been some aerial views done on that and so on. Now, what is their present operating status? Could they be a potential source for the fill requirement? I guess my first question is, are they currently operational? MR. LAPPER-There are operational fill excavations. MR. VOLLARO-The answer is yes, they are operational. MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. VOLLARO-Okay, and the second half of the question is, could they be a potential source for Rich’s fill requirement? MR. LAPPER-This is not the only place to get fill in Queensbury. MR. SCHERMERHORN-Right now there’s Fane Sand & Gravel, which is off of Dream Lake Road. That is a permitted pit by DEC. Then there’s the O’Connor pit which is just north of the Queensbury landfill. That’s a permitted pit as well, and then there’s one more behind the landfill on Mud Pond Road, and that’s Keith Harris Logging. I currently buy out of the Keith Harris gravel pit, which is more or less seasonal. We’re not buying much in the winter because he closes it. Now the Fane Sand & Gravel Pit, which a lot of people would argue and say that it’s close proximity to my project, why not buy out of there. I was with Mr. Don Fane two weeks ago, and they also own Clemente Concrete, and they honestly bought that sand and gravel pit because of the quality of the sand. They use it to wash sand that they use for their cement. If you notice, you’ll see black trucks that go up and down Bay Road Monday through Friday, every other hour on the hour. That’s hauling down to Glens Falls for their cement company. Their price on fill and gravel is not considered competitive in the marketplace. They really honestly don’t market to sell the fill, because honestly the resource that they need to make the concrete is there, and they don’t want to just use it as, they don’t want to waste it as fill selling it. So their price, it’s kind of pricey to buy it there to be honest with you. That’s one of the reasons I’m proposing it. Now, the O’Connor pit, which I know very well, I know the owners, O’Connor, they do all my blacktop for my roads. That pit does have a life to it, and it’s the same situation. They’re road builders, and they do a lot of school job, municipality jobs. They want to reserve their own sources of fill and gravel for their own projects. So, again, the prices don’t lend themselves to be very competitive because there is a life to theirs, and the Harris gravel pit is primarily, if you drive in there, it’s a lot of rock and cobble. It’s not the type of fill that we use to backfill around foundations and put underneath garage floors, basement floors and that sort of thing, and to my knowledge, those are the only three that I know are permitted in the Town of Queensbury. I know I’ve read through these letters and people tell me 7 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) there’s six or seven right in the proximity. I have noticed, from the aerial photographs, that there was one on Tee Hill Road that is now, I guess, abandoned. Well, there was two. There was one on the west side of Tee Hill and then there was one on the east side, and you can see them from the aerials, and Britton, Steve Britton, it’s the back side of his property that used to be a sand and gravel pit, and then the other one was, there was another one that I was told about that was by the old LaCabana, I think I called it the LaCabana, on Glen Lake, but that’s not an active one anymore. So, to answer your question. MR. VOLLARO-So, what I get from that, Rich, is that really this is economically feasible to you to do, essentially, for your business. MR. SCHERMERHORN-That is correct, and from the very first meeting, I believe my opening statement was that this project was intended for the sand and gravel, and intended, when I’m done, to do the two building lots. I want to make that clear. Thanks. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. I guess my next question has to do with the stormwater report, and I guess that would be, I just want to take mine out so I’ve got a point of reference, and it would be under Drainage Methodology on Page One, on the second paragraph which starts off “During some periods of this operation…” Now, one of the things I didn’t see in either, and I might have missed it, Tom, but I didn’t see it in the stormwater management report or on any of the drawings, was the percolation rate for that soil. MR. NACE-Okay. We, because of the way the stormwater management report is organized, it assumes no infiltration which obviously is not the case. It sizes the sediment basin and the stormwater basin as if there were no infiltration through the bottom of the basin, okay, in other words, being very conservative, okay. The soils that are in there, based on my experience, will be probably less than one minute soils where the basin is located. It’s a uniformly graded medium sand with very little if any fines in it, and it’ll probably be less than one minute. That can be verified if you like, but what I meant by that comment, that during some periods of the operation it will not be possible to keep all the stormwater directed to the permanent sediment pond is that, during some periods, there may be shallow depressions that are created within the excavation area, okay, that will retain water in that shallow area. MR. VOLLARO-It’s the last portion of that statement that caught my eye when it said that, “and allowed to filter into the ground”, and right away my mind snapped into a percolation number to see how fast that water would perc. MR. NACE-I’d be glad to verify that, but I can almost guarantee you sitting here that it’ll be less than a minute. MR. VOLLARO-Because I see on TP One, the bottom elevation on TP One is 74 feet, I believe, pretty close to 74 feet. MR. NACE-That’s correct, yes. MR. VOLLARO-And so you’re looking for the difference between 74 and 95, probably 12 feet or so. MR. NACE-Yes, to demonstrate that groundwater is at least five feet below the bottom of the excavation . MR. VOLLARO-Yes, because I guess that’s a question that I had when I looked at your elevation shots. I drew some lines, and I located TP One from the other map, translated it over, and tried to determine what is the water level there, you know, what is the actual level of the water that we’re dealing with. It’s got to be below elevation 74. MR. NACE-Absolutely. MR. VOLLARO-But with the percolation rates you’re talking about, it doesn’t take long to get. What I’m looking at is like at the end of the excavation. When we first start, it probably isn’t, but when we get down to your base elevations, when you start to really get close to your final elevations, then that distance gets smaller and smaller, and if the percolation rates are great and a lot of groundwater is being retained, there’s going to be infiltration there, I’m sure. MR. NACE-Absolutely. MR. VOLLARO-And that infiltration’s going to carry oil. It’s going to carry contaminants from the mining operation, and I’m just concerned about the groundwater. That’s what I’m concerned about. MR. NACE-No more than any construction site. No more than would occur on any site where machinery is used. 8 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MR. MAC EWAN-That’s not necessarily true. I mean, if you were just going to clear this lot for just a straight subdivision, and you’re going to be out of there in nine months, versus five years on a max, that’s a lot of potential hazardous material that could be deposited there. I didn’t mean to chime in there. MR. VOLLARO-That’s okay. I think that, when I look at the subdivision requirements, as long as we’re into that area, there’s a requirement, under the subdivisions, that talks about plan details and requirements, and then some people are trying to figure out, how do we get to the five years, but it seems like 183-6 called Planned and Detailed Requirements out of the 183 Code says the applicant shall submit 14 copies of a sketch plan except for a parcel of land which has not been clear cut within five years. It means that if you start up there, and essentially you are going to have to clear cut that top, you’ve got a limitation of five years before you can start to subdivide that for building. So that’s where the five years comes from is out of the Code. Am I wrong there? MR. LAPPER-I don’t think that that’s the correct interpretation. That’s the law to discourage people from clear cutting. Here, because we’ve got a grading operation for the houses, we would be getting the subdivision approval now, and then doing it. We could be getting the project approved for the two building lots, and then we would go to do the excavation like any other building project, to get it to the finished grade level as the subdivision plan calls for. MR. VOLLARO-Yes, but what I see here now is a two step operation. I see a mining operation. For better or for worse, we’re at that point now because of a Town requirement. So before you even start to do any subdividing on that property, you’re going to be doing the mining operation, and that’s going to cause you to have to clear cut the piece. MR. LAPPER-The subdivision would happen now. We’ve already applied for that. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. So you’re saying that the subdivision and the mining are coincident? MR. LAPPER-We’re saying that the subdivision approvals will become two tax map lots, will happen as part of the approval process, and that would have a finished grade for the construction of the house. Because of the nature of the hill there, it has to come down. So it’s suitable for construction, and it would all be pre- approved because we would be going through the details with the Board and all these issues. MR. VOLLARO-I guess I’m looking to my right here for a little clarification, perhaps, from the Staff. MR. ROUND-Sure. The citation that you made does prohibit subdivision of lands that have been clear cut, and I think the intent of that regulation is to prevent lack of input, the input of the Planning Board. Let me rephrase that. The way the process is proceeding now, this project is in conformance with the regulations. There’s a subdivision application in front of you, and it can be entertained as such. The regulation that you’re citing is to prevent people from clear cutting property without the approval of the Planning Board. In this case it’s in front of you. You can dictate clearing limits, and that’s what that regulation is intended to do. MR. VOLLARO-Okay. So what we can assume is that the beginning of this mining operation and the subdivision are coincident. Is that correct? MR. ROUND-Correct. MR. NACE-Bob, could I go back to your previous question, to address that a little bit? MR. VOLLARO-Sure. MR. NACE-As far as the concern about contaminants going through the soil, okay, those contaminants presumably being fuel oil or oil from the vehicles, can be addressed, and we’ll be glad to address that in one way, which is to stipulate an area where vehicles are refueled and where any maintenance work is done on them, and where they’re parked, and make sure that stipulations are required that there be, that area be elevated a certain distance above the elevation where we know groundwater to be low, and that the soils directly underneath that area be removed at the end of the project and taken off site. MR. VOLLARO-Okay, so that any infiltration contaminants that have been collected there will be removed, that’s what you’re saying? MR. NACE-Will be removed, correct. MR. VOLLARO-That’s the plan. Just one other thing, and then I’m going to pass on to another member and let me hear what they have to say. The site development data sheet needs to be revised to 100 foot buffer from the 50 foot that’s on there now. MR. NACE-Yes, you’re right. 9 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MR. VOLLARO-Okay, and that’s all I have right now, but, Mr. Chairman, you can continue on. MR. MAC EWAN-Chris? MR. HUNSINGER-I see that in the revised packages that we received that virtually all the issues that we brought up at the last meeting you’ve addressed. We talked about hours of operation and some of the other issues. The traffic report we just received tonight, but as we were going through that, a question that immediately came to my mind is certainly the mining operation would not be open year round, would it? MR. SCHERMERHORN-I think in the report we have it as 285 days, periods during the winter we wouldn’t work, holidays. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. MR. SCHERMERHORN-There may be times that, like I said at the last meeting, where we could possibly be working for a week or two straight and then there’d be a couple of days where the conditions could be wet because we’ve had a lot of rain and we can’t haul it to locations. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. I mean, in the discussion of how you arrived at the 285 days, there was no discussion of seasonality. I mean, the reason why I ask the question is because if there were periods during the winter months when the mining operation was shut down, then that would obviously create some, anywhere, where I was going was that obviously if there were times during the winter months when the mining operation was shut down, you know, that would increase the number of trips per day on those days that the mining operation was open and that’s why I asked the question, but it sounds like you had taken that into account in your numbers. I wanted to make sure that I was reading the cross sectional diagrams correctly that had been provided. In looking through the current heights, the finished heights of the hill where you’re removing the most material, those would be in excess of 50 feet, is that correct? MR. NACE-That’s correct, between 50 and 60. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. I had the same comment as Bob did on the buffer zone. The map was still showing a 50 foot rather than 100 foot. MR. NACE-In the site data. MR. HUNSINGER-Yes. MR. NACE-Okay. That will be changed. MR. HUNSINGER-One of the other issues that I noted on the landscaping plan, we talk about a lot, is you specified white pines, and, you know, those certainly are the native plant to that site, to this area, but they don’t typically make a very good visual buffer, if that was the intent. MR. NACE-Well, the intent was to fill in the over story that’s there with the deciduous trees and provide something that has winter, you know, the intent was to fill in and provide an evergreen, which would give some winter buffer in place of the deciduous, and again, they are native. The general area is a mix of white pine and deciduous hardwoods. MR. HUNSINGER-Okay. I didn’t have any other questions for now. MR. MAC EWAN-John? MR. STROUGH-Good evening. What I tried to do is just about summarize every concern, letter, phone calls, otherwise, and get it out. Okay. Let’s deal with the noise first. Most of the comments are that the days and the hours of operation and duration of the project would be a substantive burden to those that live around the area. So noted. MR. LAPPER-Okay. Well, Rich was primarily saying, during working hours, Monday through Friday, when most people wouldn’t be around, but again, a lot of people live right there, but that would be the time, rather than evening hours when families are home. We propose that would include Saturday morning, and obviously, that’s something that we could talk about. MR. STROUGH-Okay. Also noted was that summertime noises have the greatest potential for causing annoyance because of open windows, outside activities, etc., and what is the location of the closest house. How many houses are, let’s say within an audible range? MR. NACE-Okay. There are three houses that are in the closest proximity. This one is 215 feet, I believe it is, from the edge of the excavation. This one is 145, I believe, and this one is 230, 240. 10 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MR. LAPPER-John, you can see the homes on that. MR. NACE-And here, the three homes I pointed out before. The first is up here. That’s 200 feet, 210 feet. The second one I pointed out is right there, it’s 145 feet, and the third one is right here, about 230, 240 feet. Rich pointed out, and he’s correct. I forgot, there is one right here on the corner as well. MR. STROUGH-All right. Well, anyhow, there is a potential to cause some residential, whether it be five or whether it be twelve or some place in between. They go on to note that there’s potential noise generators, and they list specifically trucks, loaders, bulldozers, which individually can exceed 80 decibels in a weight average, and cumulative noise would be even greater. Noise approaching 80 decibels considered to be annoying, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and more so than that, why don’t I just summarize this, and you can summarize a return. That might go easier. Listed as most annoying or irritating, jake brakes, reverse beeping, running engines, diesel especially. Diesel’s would aggravate the noise situation, up and down gearing, especially if it’s under load. Noisy ingress and egress. People located along Moon Hill Road, but what is going to be, it’s eight vehicles per day? MR. LAPPER-Yes, eight vehicles, no what we’re anticipating is eight vehicles a day, one an hour in and one an hour out, but because Shelly was trying to be conservative with her numbers, the worst case she was talking about was two per hour. So that would be four trips, two in and two out. MR. STROUGH-So at the most it would be 16 vehicle trips per day? MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. STROUGH-Okay. Now they also argue that the removal of the current natural terrain and vegetation. MR. LAPPER-The most would be 32 in a worst day, worst case. MR. STROUGH-Okay, worst case scenario, 32 trips per day. All right, removal of the current natural terrain and vegetation would negatively impact noise on the adjacent residential area. MR. LAPPER-That’s why we added another 50 feet of trees. To address that, we added the additional 50 feet beyond what the regulations require. MR. STROUGH-Well, the problem with that is, we just went through the Great Escape review, and the experts say trees are not good noise attenuators. In other words, they do very little to reduce noise. MR. LAPPER-Well, I guess we all have to be clear that this is not, it will be heard any time any of their construction sites in Town, there will be a front end loader, a bulldozer, they probably won’t be operated at the same time, and a dump truck. That’s not different from other construction sites in Town, and it’s a short term impact, maximum five years, short term in terms of being finite. MR. STROUGH-Yes, okay. MR. MAC EWAN-Folks, I would ask you all to show some courtesy here, and we’ll try to get through this as best we can. I realize this is a very emotional for most of you out there. So all will have an opportunity to speak when it’s your turn. So let’s just try to get through this and give everyone their opportunities, please. MR. STROUGH-Okay. The questions that were asked might need to be answered at some point. What would be the maximum peak noise contribution above the ambient levels, and I’m sure we don’t have the answer to that, but that may come up, and another one, an evaluation of the ambient pre-construction baseline conditions at the nearest noise receptors and uses that are proximal to the project should be required, a description of noise standards applicable to the project and identification of the noise producing sources related to the project to include fixed equipment or process operations, mobile equipment or process operations, transport movement of products of material generated, pumps, compressors, etc. and identification and evaluation of the need for and effectiveness of reasonable noise abatement measures for singular and multiple effects should be included in this evaluation. I hope the evaluation is not as long as that sentence. Also that consideration should be given to amplitude, frequency, impulse patterns, duration of potential noise generations possibly produced by this proposed application, and basically they say that the noise being generated by this proposed project would be inappropriate in a residential setting and the proposed buffer inefficient as a noise attenuator. Okay. So that’s noise, if you have any comments to that effect. MR. LAPPER-It sounds like they’re asking for a noise study. MR. STROUGH-It sounds like it. All right. The next topic is dust, dirt silica pollution. Potential sources would be movement of trucks and loaders, scooping and loading, and wind over denuded, unvegetated, uncovered excavated areas. Even use of best management practices would not eliminate fugitive dust. Fugitive dust is a source of health problems. Fugitive dust is nuisance problem. Does the applicant offer an 11 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) integrated compliance and informance program with inspection and monitoring protocols. Who would do the air quality surveillance? Does the applicant offer a regular program to monitor and analyze their contribution to air quality pollution and offer possible actions/remedies if levels are beyond comfortable or safe? Who will monitor the site development for the use of sound environmental management practices to make sure they are operational and effective, and the proposed buffer provides minimal or insufficient mitigation in the air shed area. Air quality might be substantially degraded during very dry, very windy weather. All right. So that’s basically dust, dirt, silica pollution. That’s, reading the letters and stuff, I just lumped them altogether in one category. So it sounds like that might need some studying. Okay. Now the archeological/historical significance, there’s no sense in going through that, Bob brought that up, and I think you gave an answer to that. We’re going to wait and see for Phase IA. Some applicants argue that this is not a hardship case because the applicant doesn’t own the property. There are numerous sand and gravel mines available. The applicant has not identified alternatives, but I think you have talked about those alternatives. MR. LAPPER-Hardship is not a standard here. MR. STROUGH-And it’s not a standard here, but it was brought up as a concern. So we can say that’s not an issue as far as the Planning Board’s concerned. So that’s what I’m saying. I’m bringing everything out. MR. LAPPER-Rich does have the property under contract, for the record. MR. STROUGH-Okay. Visual impact is the next topic. They say it’s going to look like a scarred landscape, undesirable. They also say present landform configuration buffers the residents from Bay Road and other undesirable exposures. The present landform configuration buffers them. That it would be an undesirable change of vista, and some people have said a visual impact analysis should be required. Odor impact, not much on that. There was one or two comments of the smell of gas and diesel emissions. Traffic, I think you’ve answered many of the traffic questions already. Let’s see if there’s anything new. You’ve talked about site visibility. I think you’ve answered most of what’s been brought up to date on the traffic. Effect on groundwater, you’ve answered that. You’ve stipulated that refueling areas would be in certain locations with conditions and the soil removed of that area following the application’s completion. All right. Property values. If an immediate adjacent property owner wanted to sell their property, after mining operations began, would it be as marketable? MR. MAC EWAN-I don’t think that’s relevant, really, John. MR. STROUGH-Okay, but then they had cumulative impacts considered, the proposed action would be a detriment to adjacent landowners. All right. Wetlands/watersheds. They say that three watersheds actually, Lake Sunnyside, Dream Lake, and one letter writer said that Halfway Brook was included in that. MR. NACE-Just for the record, the drainage off this site does not reach any of those watersheds. I think on the aerial photograph you can see the closest adjacent surface water is that stream to the north. We also have Lake Sunnyside to the east, but as I described in the stormwater report, all of the runoff from this site collects in that low depression adjacent to Bay Road and filters into the ground. MR. STROUGH-So they’re not contributory watersheds? MR. NACE-That is correct. MR. STROUGH-Okay. MR. MAC EWAN-As that site is currently, you’re saying there’s no runoff off that site heading toward that Brook? MR. NACE-There is if you. The existing site has a peak or a hill here, a little ridge line runs over to another peak over here. So presently, yes, the back of this site does runoff toward that Brook. However, when it’s regarded, all of the disturbed area will runoff to this low spot. MR. STROUGH-Okay. Fauna and flora. Now the effect of the significant change in topography and significant reduction on vegetation threatens or upsets the existing habitat. This area provides a larger contiguous area of habitat. It is a habitat corridor, and the applicant’s proposal would result in habitat fragmentation. MR. NACE-Well, as far as the habitat corridor, it’s bounded on the two sides by roadways, which provide more of a barrier than the finished site would. When it’s finished, it will be largely re-vegetated. Even the slopes we put those pine trees, that’ll eventually grow up into pretty much the native material that’s there now, so I really don’t think that that’s the case. MR. STROUGH-Okay. Stormwater, you’ve answered many of these questions. Let’s go down to, well, they do have one question. Soil erosion will be more severe once the overburden is removed, increasing the likelihood of detention basin failure. Who will monitor detention basin functioning? 12 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MR. NACE-There are stipulations right on the plan for removal of silt from the basin. That can be monitored by the Town Building and Codes Department, and that’s part of the requirement of the site plan is right on there, as far as the removal of silt. I believe it stipulates that after six inches of silt builds up in the bottom of the basin it’s to be removed. MR. STROUGH-Okay. Thank you. Light pollution, I understand there’s not going to be any lighting. So that’s a non-issue. We talked about traffic, but one thing that the residents brought up was road capacity in terms of the construction of the road. There has been a question, is Moon Hill constructed for prolonged, heavy vehicle use. I mean, has that been investigated? MR. NACE-Yes, I believe that Staff was supposed to contact the Highway Department about that, but we are using only a very short section of Moon Hill Road for truck traffic. It is presently used by truck traffic as a shortcut through over to 149, and from looking out there, I did not see any signs of distress in this area of the road. MR. STROUGH-But we don’t have a definitive answer to that yet? MR. NACE-No, that really needs to come from your own Highway Department. MR. STROUGH-Okay. Aesthetics. The Comprehensive Land Use Plan states the preservation of the natural beauty of Bay Road corridor is important, and thus designated as scenic. This property is within the Bay Road corridor view shed, therefore within the Town’s inventory of aesthetic resources. The mining operation, as proposed, would be high profile and an eyesore. Proposal would damage scenic road view vista. It would have a detrimental effect on the perceived beauty. It impairs the character or quality of the area. Relocation of stormwater pond notwithstanding would not screen the project from Bay Road viewing especially during some seasons. The applicant should assess a line of sight profile using worst case scenario impact area should be five miles as suggested by the New York State DEC. MR. NACE-Well, I beg to differ. I do believe that the additional buffer to the stormwater pond plus the additional planting in that area will provide an adequate buffer to Bay Road. As far as visual impact from other areas, there’s a ridge that runs through the project. I don’t know if you’ve got, the ridge that runs down through here, behind the project here, provides screening because of the final slope of the project being down toward Bay Road. That ridge line in here will end up screening the project from views off to the north and northwest. MR. SANFORD-Excuse me, Chris. Could we move the upright so we can see the, at least so I can see the picture better? Thanks. MR. ROUND-If I might interject. Staff did inquiry as to the, if there was any posting on capacities of Moon Hill or Bay Road, and there are no weight postings for either of those roads. Staff Planner contacted Lisa Penistan from Warren County. I’ve got a note in the file. MR. STROUGH-That’s a County highway? MR. ROUND-A County highway. MR. STROUGH-So they said the road is constructed? MR. ROUND-Maybe that information is not correct, but that’s, we inquired of County DPW, and they. MR. STROUGH-Well, I did read her assessment, but in the assessment that was given me, the capacity of the road for weight wasn’t addressed. MR. ROUND-Okay. MR. STROUGH-Okay. Reclamation. People have had questions about what happens to Richard, but you’ve brought that out. You’re willing to bond it. Okay. Zoning. The intent of the 1988 RR-3 zoning was to allow current mining operations to be in conformity with zoning, not necessarily permit of mining operation to exist in residential area. To guard against this occurrence, site plan review was listed as a requirement. The new zoning proposal, soon to be adopted, does not allow for mining in RR-3. I suppose there’s not much of a comment you can make to that. MR. LAPPER-Well, we have always been characterizing this as a grading operation because we don’t believe that that parcel can be built on without grading because of the current topography. MR. STROUGH-Well, by all definition, I think it does fall into mining operation, and we’re doing site plan review. It’s not necessarily a permitted use. It’s an allowable use and has to go through site plan review, which we’re doing. All right. Neighborhood character. The proposed mining operation is incongruent with 13 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) surrounding neighborhood. Descriptions of the area include such terms as quiet, rural, pristine, attractive, wooded area, an area of peace, tranquility, lovely countryside, a place of natural beauty, picturesque, is zoned Rural Residential because of its distinctive rural character. It is a reasonable assumption that those living in the immediate area of this proposed action were encouraged to locate here because of the desirable character of the location, it’s current and existing topography and flora. All right. So they’re saying this is out of character with the neighborhood on one side, and they’re also adding that they moved there because of the topographic conditions that are currently there, and they feel that your removal of the hill will be a detriment to the quality of life they enjoy, to their home values, and to what they’ve expected when they went and bought homes in this area. Okay. That’s an issue that’s come up. MR. LAPPER-We look at the construction operation as a temporary operation, a finite period of time, which Rich has said no more than five years. It could be shorter than that, but obviously the traffic would be increased if that was a shorter period of time, and ultimately, and for the remainder of time, it would be two houses which is absolutely in keeping with the rest of the area, except that with five acre lots this would be larger lots than many of the neighbors. Short term impacts and ultimately no impacts. MR. STROUGH-Okay, and then other. Heavy equipment and vehicle movement vibrations might threaten the structural integrity of nearby homes. These are little things I tacked on at the end. I didn’t have any category to put them in. MR. NACE-Given the soil conditions, there’s really not that potential for vibration to be transmitted very far. MR. STROUGH-Not likely. Once the natural overburden is removed, will the site favor the emergence of noxious weeds. MR. NACE-Noxious weeds? MR. STROUGH-Noxious weeds. MR. SANFORD-Like what? MR. STROUGH-I don’t know. Maybe they’ll tell us when they come up here. Okay. MR. NACE-The reseeding of the area includes bird’s foot trefoil, which is a plant that will, once it is established, keep out most of the weed growth. It’s a flowering plant that, you know, is used generally in highly sloped stabilization. MR. STROUGH-Okay. Well, so you say we’ll deal with all of these. If there’s a new issue out there, I’ll be surprised. Project proposal would cause a disruption of lifestyle of proximate residents, including but not limited to the impacts of noise and dust that would impair property use. Disruption of lifestyle namely they probably can’t go out and do a barbecue normally as they usually do because there’s trucks and equipment, and dust and maybe odors and other things like that. So they’re saying that it’s going to disrupt their lifestyle, and the last thing that somebody said, there should be a cumulative impact analysis undertaken, as part of the Planning Board SEQRA review, and a positive declaration of environmental significance should be the Planning Board’s determination and thereafter ask the applicant to draft a draft environmental impact statement to evaluate potential impacts directed specifically at traffic, drainage hydrology, noise, air quality, neighborhood character, aesthetics, land values, fauna and flora. Okay. Well, we’ll see where we go from here, but those are all the concerns, and you had an opportunity to answer those, and if there’s anything else you’d like to add at this time, we’re listening. MR. LAPPER-Nothing at this time. MR. STROUGH-Okay. Well, thank you. MR. LAPPER-Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Rich? MR. SANFORD-Thanks. Well, I haven’t, I’ll start off with a couple of quick questions. I think the applicant clarified this, but the primary purpose of this project isn’t really about two homes. It’s really about mining. Is that a correct understanding? MR. SCHERMERHORN-I guess I’ll say it again for the record. The first meeting that we had, two months ago, the first thing I said, it is about taking the sand and gravel from my Baybrook Professional Park. The letters in the Chronicle, the letters in the Post Star. I’ve never, ever tried to mislead anybody in any way. I have mentioned that the fill is very valuable to me. That is correct in saying that it is about fill. I’ve never said anything different, but after taking the fill, I do have full intentions of building two nice homes on two, five acre building lots. Being a builder, from my experience, that will happen. 14 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MR. SANFORD-All right. Let me just start off by kind of giving a little insight as to how I view my task here on this Board. I recognize this may be an allowed use, but I see this Board’s task is to see whether or not or to determine whether or not it’s an appropriate use, and in trying to come to terms with that, I spent a lot of time considering Section 179-38 of the Town Code, and I believe, I know Jonathan is familiar with this, but for those of you out there who aren’t, you perhaps should read through it, and this builds a little bit upon what Mr. Strough had to say, because 179-38 talks in terms of in order to approve this type of a site plan, we need to find that the project would not have any undue adverse impact upon, quite honestly, all the things that he listed, and I’m not really going to repeat them. I think he did an adequate job. My question to you is, I mean, let’s just use aesthetics. Do you believe a five year mining operation is not going to have an adverse impact upon the aesthetics of that area? MR. LAPPER-Our answer, simply, is that we think that the project has been engineered and designed so that there is a substantial buffer where the buffer is thin, trees will be added initially. The operation is a small operation with one loader and one dump truck at a time. Will it be invisible? No, but because it’s in a basin or a bowl, it’s not a major grading operation compared to building a Lowe’s or what was just done up here for the senior retirement project which was 45 acres. Probably half of that was all open for a period of 18 months, because that was many trucks at the same time, and this is just one at a time. Rich was talking today about the possibility of doing the bulldozing and final grade section by section, as you get to final grade, obviously, in the initial part he’ll be bringing everything down and you won’t be near final grade, but once that happens, it can be staged so that any of these impacts can be minimized, but they’re five acre lots. They’re in the three acre zone where there aren’t a lot of receptors right there, and any of these issues, noise, visual, we can talk about what the mitigate measures are so that this all is done as gently as possible. MR. MAC EWAN-Is that a yes or a no? MR. LAPPER-We think that can be mitigated. MR. SANFORD-Okay. Well, I’m interested in hearing what some of the people who are going to speak have to say, but my preliminary assessment is that on many of the criteria listed in Subsection D, there will most definitely be undue adverse impact, and one other question I have, and this is something I have wrestled with, and I think others on the Board might wrestle with. Quite often when we have a controversial project like this, you’ll have a group of people who find that it’s going to be very detrimental to their interests, and I think we certainly have that here, but to counterbalance that, oftentimes you’ll have a situation where you can make a strong argument that it will also benefit a great portion of the population. This looks much more singular to me. It looks like this project is really for the benefit of the applicant or a few individuals, but clearly perceived as a detriment to very many. MR. MAC EWAN-Rich, can I get you to ask questions, please. MR. SANFORD-I have a question. Did you consider this when you decided to move forward with this project? MR. LAPPER-I guess very simply, we’re very aware that a lot of our neighbors in this part of Town are very concerned. What we see this as is a bulldozer in the middle of the woods. So in terms of the magnitude of this project, it is a very small operation with one guy on a bulldozer loading one dump truck at a time, and it is buffered, and we don’t see that this is a significant project that is going to disturb people, and at the end there’ll be two nice houses, just like what’s there now. MR. SANFORD-Okay. I certainly will want to talk after the public hearing. Thank you very much. MR. LAPPER-Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Cathy? MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. I’m going to reserve my opinions until I hear everybody speak, but I do have a couple of questions. I did receive these wonderful aerial photographs from one of the letters, but my first question has to do with these abandoned mines that are supposedly throughout the Town and one of them is farther down the road off Moon Hill Road, called the Northeast End Abandoned Mines. Are they abandoned because there’s nothing left in them to take out, or is it because they’re, the people that owned them previously just don’t need to use them anymore? MR. SCHERMERHORN-I honestly don’t know the answer why they’re abandoned. MRS. LA BOMBARD-All right. So then there are other places in Town, then, where you could get fill if you researched it? MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes. As I mentioned, there are three sand and gravels. 15 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MRS. LA BOMBARD-You mentioned those three, Rich, but I’m saying besides those three, like you had mentioned the LaCabana area one, and then you had mentioned the Tee Hill Road fields, and then I see this one here called the Northeast End Abandon Mine, off Moon Hill. MR. SCHERMERHORN-Right. For whatever reasons, I’m not sure if they were run illegally at the time, or I guess I don’t want to phrase illegally, but they may not be permitted pits, and maybe the people just opted not to get the permits because obviously it is a very difficult process, or it could be that they were, the life of the pit was used up. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. All right. Okay, but we really don’t know. Those are just, that’s just your speculation. MR. SCHERMERHORN-Well, it’s not just mine. It’s from the letters that I was reading, the people telling me about the abandoned pits in that area. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. Now, my next question has to do with the, not, we haven’t heard much about the wildlife in the area, and one of the things you said was, I think it was Tom, that the roads intersect there, so there, maybe I didn’t hear this correctly, that there really probably isn’t that much traffic because the animals have those, Bay Road and Moon Hill as barriers, but when I look at this photograph here, I can see, and driving around through the back of Walker, that the land really would be a habitat, there’s a lot of land there that goes way back to those wetlands that border on Walker. Now maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I kind of consider myself blessed this winter because I have seen this winter two bobcats and one coyote, and I’m like, wow, so, to me, this looks like an area where, that is very similar to where I saw those animals in other places that maybe there is a lot of wildlife that I would hate to, you know, there could be a lot of wildlife in there that could be disrupted, and my third question has to do with this. Not being a builder, I would like to ask you, would it be possible for somebody to come in, right now, you said that land, those 10 acres are for sale, to come in and build a house on that Moon Hill? MR. LAPPER-Without excavating? MRS. LA BOMBARD-Well, you’d have to dig a foundation, but you could put a little road in that might have an incline on it, driveway, and you could build the house maybe a little bit towards the top and maybe out of 10 acres you only need to cut an acre or an acre and a quarter for a driveway and a yard and what have you. MR. SCHERMERHORN-As I said earlier when I went out there at lunchtime today, and I looked at it, anything is possible. It’s not just desirable because of the steep slope and the way you’d have to get up to it, but again, anything is possible. To answer your question, yes, you could put a house on the top of it. MRS. LA BOMBARD-And you could put two houses there, one on each. MR. SCHERMERHORN-I don’t believe two, because if you really study the map, it goes right to a point. There’s not a lot of, there’s probably not, I don’t want to speculate, but there’s probably not more than half an acre of flat area at the very peak of that. So I don’t know if you’d be able to get two in. MRS. LA BOMBARD-But you could also build into the hill, too, which a lot of people have done, a lot of people do because of the topography. MR. SCHERMERHORN-Well, without doing a good deal of excavating, I mean, it’s possible, but it’s very, very steep. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to walk to the site, but it’s, I mean, first impressions are, yes, you can see it’s a very steep incline. MR. MAC EWAN-Northwest Village on West Mountain is all that way. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes. See, that’s what I’m saying. In other words, I guess I’ve interpreted this project as being, first and foremost, a place to get fill and a secondary reason would be to, after you’re done, instead of just leaving it like that, to put two houses on it and put it back, as much as you can, to its original environment, the way it originally was. MR. LAPPER-What we disagree with disagree with with that is that if it was just to get fill, he would dig down into the ground, and now he’s only bringing it down to the road. That’s what’s proposed. So he’s leaving it flat, so that it can be best developed for houses rather than to maximize. We heard there’s at least 12 to 20 feet between the groundwater. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Right. MR. LAPPER-So it could be more of an excavation than what we’re proposing. 16 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MRS. LA BOMBARD-Right, Jon, except that just commonsense has it if a project was going to dig below the ground then you probably wouldn’t have a room large enough to put everybody in tonight. I mean, you’re just trying to, I mean, that’s one way to keep the use so it’s not so drastic. MR. LAPPER-Absolutely. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. That’s it. Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-I heard, if I heard correctly, did you mention that there was going to be storage of fuel on site? MR. LAPPER-Not storage. MR. NACE-No. MR. MAC EWAN-How will the fueling of the pay loaders, backhoes and dozer be handled? MR. SCHERMERHORN-Usually we have pickup trucks with tanks on the back of pickup trucks with electric pumps and just pump it into it. MR. MAC EWAN-How often do you think you would be filling them? MR. SCHERMERHORN-Usually you fill them, well, a larger loader once every three days, if you’re running it continuously. MR. MAC EWAN-Is it safe to say twice a week you’d be up there filling it? MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. Is there any potential that you would, if this was approved, that once you start doing your mining operation, that you could have an accelerated rate of removal? MR. LAPPER-If the Planning Board wants that. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m just asking the question. MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes. If Planning Board, or if the public was looking for this project to be done sooner, I have no problem with that either. It’s just, it’s the Catch-22. Now we’re going to have the increased traffic which is, according to our letter, seemed to be the biggest amount of concern. MR. MAC EWAN-Well, I’m not looking at it from that aspect. I’m looking at it from the aspect of, that your building projects require more fill quicker, or you have an opportunity to sell some fill. MR. LAPPER-Well, he could stockpile it at his Bay Road site also. MR. MAC EWAN-Well, I mean, you know, things can change and things can happen after an approval is given. God knows I’ve seen enough of that over the years. If you had a potential, though, that you had an opportunity to accelerate the removal of the fill out of there, or to sell it to other contractors, or to even, because your projects are getting so busy, you don’t have enough of a crew or trucks to handle it, you subcontract out and hire haulers to come in there. Is there a potential for any of that to happen? MR. LAPPER-Well, we’ve been looking at this as the Planning Board will dictate to us, in terms of what you want to see. The traffic report indicates that there’s not a traffic problem. So if we increase the trucks, the roads can certainly handle it. If the Planning Board wants this to happen faster, it can happen faster, and if the Planning Board wants it to happen in five years, it can happen in five years, and Rich has tried to be flexible about that. MR. MAC EWAN-As you would start this procedure of removing the fill out of there, how would the seeding and reclamation of the land take place? I mean, would you do it in stages? Would you wait until it’s all done? MR. NACE-No, we could definitely do it in stages, and Rich was looking at that, thinking about talking about that today. MR. SCHERMERHORN-It’s most definitely possible that we could start in the rear of it, where it’s not visible from Moon Hill or Bay Road. I could do sections at a time where, you know, maybe I’d do a quarter acre at a time, go right behind them with a bulldozer, grade it off, seed it and put our silt fences up. I mean, we don’t have to go in, and I didn’t plan on doing this. We don’t have to go in and just level the whole, take all the trees right off the top of it immediately. We could go in, just get enough room to get our loader and 17 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) dump truck in there and start and gradually pull it out, clean up as we go, not pile the trees, you know, and leave them there. We can clean this and grade it as we go. It doesn’t have to be like your typical sand and gravel pit that everybody thinks of with the big, steep banks. I mean, we could gradually work at this as we go. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. The other couple of questions I have, I guess, are directly related to traffic, and Shelly, in your letter here you talked about site distances, based on the proximity of the Town’s speed limit or the posted speed limits in those areas. As we all know, hardly anybody goes to posted speed limit anymore. Did you give consideration to sight distances, per say, on Moon Hill if somebody was traveling between 45 or 40 miles an hour coming around those curves, which is posted, what you said was, the posted speed limit is 45, right, that you have. Did you take into consideration faster speeds and site distance requirements on Moon Hill? MS. JOHNSTON-We did take it into consideration. We also took into consideration the proximity to the stopped intersection at Bay Road, in your approach, you’re going around a horizontal curve and you’re approaching an intersection where you have to stop, so, yes, we did take it into consideration. MR. MAC EWAN-That intersection has been problematic over the years with because people don’t stop, and there have been accidents up there. On Bay Road, let’s take it from the other way, Bay Road is posted at 50 miles an hour. Nobody does 50 on there, usually between 50 and 65. Did you give consideration to sight distance from that aspect? MS. JOHNSTON-Yes. We looked at stopping distance, and the stopping sight distance for a vehicle that’s approaching Bay, that’s on Bay Road approaching Moon Hill Road from the north, you’re on Bay Road approaching Moon Hill Road, that stopping sight distance is adequate for somebody that’s going 60 miles an hour. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. MS. JOHNSTON-So that if you see a truck pulling out, you could slow to a safe speed. MR. MAC EWAN-I guess my final question for now is, during your review of this traffic scenario, is there any bus stop, school bus stops in that region, in that area? MS. JOHNSTON-I did not see a stopped school bus. We saw school buses going by, but there may be. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m asking are you aware that there are any school bus stops there? MS. JOHNSTON-I’m not aware if there are or are not. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. That I would like to research, because I do believe there’s at least two up there. MS. JOHNSTON-I’m guessing I’ll be educated tonight. MR. MAC EWAN-All right. Anything else you wanted to add? MR. LAPPER-We’ll listen to the public. MR. MAC EWAN-Okay. All right. What we’re going to do is open up the public hearing, and we have the sign-in sheet, obviously, that most all of you probably signed. We would ask you, please, to keep your comments as brief as possible. I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of people who want to talk tonight. If you have something that you want to touch on that maybe we haven’t touched on, we certainly would appreciate the comments. We do have a listing of everyone who sent a letter. Before we get going on the public hearing aspect of it, we’ll read off the names of people we’ve received letters from. We’re not going to read the letters aloud. If you do, indeed, want to read your own letter and you’re here tonight, you’re, by all means, welcome to do so. If we can, you know, I would ask you to maybe keep your comments to two or three minutes at a maximum, if we could. Maybe we could get through everyone tonight here very easily. Chris, will you read off that list, please. MR. ROUND-Yes, and I apologize if I butcher anybody’s name here. We have letters from M. Dobert, E & R Barili, P & S, and I’m using abbreviations because it is quite a long list, Myhrberg, Huber, Thompson, Ballard, Villa, Auburn, Conboy, Christie, Monthie, Monahan, Kubricky, again from Huber, and most all the letters are in opposition. I mean, it’s the exception that there is one in support, with the exception of correspondence, there are some professional correspondence between review agencies as well. Schermerhorn, Magowan, Cech, Cracco, Whiting, Fuller, Casella, Bovee, Surrey Fields Homeowners Association, McPhee, Casella, Cartier, Sundberg, Currie, Casella, again Casella, Payne, Monthie, Huber, Huber, Casella, Huber, Huber, Barili, Leary Robertson, Hayes, and Denise, as well as the Protective Association of Lake Sunnyside. For the public’s education, many of these letters were sent directly to Planning Board members, and in order for us to make sure records are in our official records, if they’re 18 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) directed to the Town Planning Board, sent to the Town Planning Office, Planning Board members are copied with all letters when a piece of correspondence does come in. We’ve found it problematic that many letters being addressed to personal residences, Board members are not always, it’s very difficult to track those things and get them back into our personal files. So in the future if you direct them to the Planning Board, direct them to our attention and we will get copies to those. MR. MAC EWAN-Just for clarification, anyone who sent a letter to me was handed in to Staff. So I handed in a good majority of them. So I’m sure we got most everyone tracked. MR. ROUND-Yes, and if we don’t, and as Mr. MacEwan indicated, we’d be happy to read any of the letters into the record. They are a part of the official record. When received, they do carry the weight of, you know, whether they’re read orally or not, they carry the same weight, in the public record, and Planning Board members, the real weight is the Planning Board members receiving your comments and then personally reading them themselves, and so that’s where it affects the process. MR. MAC EWAN-With that, Cathy, you can read off the first name, if they want to come up and speak. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. The first name I think is Corrine Drieon of Lakeview Drive in Queensbury. AUDIENCE MEMBER-She left. MR. MAC EWAN-She left? Okay. MRS. LA BOMBARD-She’s gone. All right. Next is Randy Huber. RANDY HUBER MR. HUBER-My name is Randy Huber. I have the property on the north side of the proposed site. I’m one of the few people instrumental in this. The first thing I’d like to do is, if I could, is poll the Board to find out if all the Board members did visit the site. MR. MAC EWAN-We all did, last week, yes, we did. MR. HUBER-You did. You didn’t walk the site. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Many times we’ve been to the site. MR. MAC EWAN-We have been at the site. MR. HUBER-But no one walked the site. Is that correct? MR. MAC EWAN-Some of us may have, some of us may not have, but we have been to the site. MR. HUBER-Okay. Mr. Barili was kind enough to make this scaled model off of their map. It’s kind of a blessing and a curse at the same time for us. One thing it does show is that there are, this would be my house, the Green’s house and the Mitchell’s house, Moon Hill and Bay Road, and this is made to their, all their graphics. There are building sites in the back. There are building sites over here, and there could be building sites over here without a doubt. Off the back you have a view of French Mountain, and it’s a naturally gorgeous view. Off the front you have the same view I have from my house of all the mountains in Vermont, an absolutely beautiful view. It’s not Chestnut Ridge, but I’ll tell you, with a little bit of construction, and a little bit of ingenuity, I think a builder could make a very good site. Maybe one of the reasons it hasn’t sold, it’s a big piece of land for one person to buy, and no one’s tried to subdivide it yet. That’s probably where it should go, to a subdivision. One of the problems I have is the aesthetics. When they said it’s not a problem, well, the top of this hill is 55 feet, and on top of that, I measured the tree personally. It’s a 40 foot tall tree. So we’re looking at approximately 95 feet on the top of this. When you take this section out of here, which once their proposal goes through, you can take the Continental building downtown, which is 10 stories high, and put it in there, and just top those trees. That’s a considerable amount of dirt. This is not a grading thing. This is not something they’re moving dirt around. It’s a major excavation for this neighborhood. As you can see from the pictures on the board back there, numerous wildlife is pictured, some of the other people are going to talk about it as we go through. A lot of concerns and a lot of problems. As far as the pits go, I contacted DEC. They sent me a map which is on the board over there, which shows 12 pits in Queensbury. Some of them are not active at this point, but also in those pictures they did not show six inactive pits that were just left. One of our biggest concerns, what happens if this man falters and falls down? Who’s going to clean up this mess? The other thing is the fact that you’ve got these 40 foot trees on each side, 30 foot of embankments. It pretty much leaves a half pike where it comes down these slopes and down these slopes. Now all they’re going to put down here is grass, a few pine trees. I’ve got two pine trees in front of my house that are 14 years old, and they’re still only 12 foot tall. How long will it take them to come up and reclaim this? And that’s one hell of a lawn, I think, to mow. Okay. Unfortunately, this picture was taken in the wintertime. Normally, all this canopy here is a very closed 19 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) in area. If I stand at this location, which is the hill on my lot, and look to my back part here, I can’t even see a person standing there in the summertime. So this is kind of unfair. It looks like a pretty stripped down area, but those are all young trees up there. As you can see the tall pines here, pines over here, and pines in my yard, but the rest of it is all growing trees. Back here is approximately 50 trees that were blown down during Hurricane Floyd three years ago. There’s also a north wind that comes up this back side and whips through here, and once they’re finished, they’re going to have a wind tunnel through there like I don’t even want to think about because it’s going to blow dirt right across this road, without a doubt. The fact the zoning law has been changed, I think, is a very important thing on our behalf. This area that you see behind my house, right here, was a gravel pit, and I believe Mr. Schermerhorn said approximately, and I judge it to be 75 years old, or whatever, no one else in the neighborhood seems to remember it. Those trees now are just starting to come in. So I anticipate my grandchildren will probably see this become wooded area when they’re old enough to retire themselves, because it’ll take forever to grow trees. They will not grow in five or ten years. It’ll be more like 30 or 40 years. I believe that’s all I have to say. Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. Next name, Cathy. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Drew Monthie, Tee Hill Road. DREW MONTHIE MR. MONTHIE-I have some information I’m going to cover, and I’ve made folders for each of you. I hope everyone’s name is correct on there. I live at 120 Tee Hill Road, next to one of the older sand pits in the area. I should probably tell you a little bit about myself since it’s pertinent to what I’m going to speak about. I’m a graduate of the State University of New York at Cobleskill with an Associates Degree in Plant Science and Horticulture, and a graduate of SUNY Empire State College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Ecology. I have been working with and observing plants for 32 of my 37 years and doing so professionally for over 20 years, and there’s a lot of detrimental ecological impacts that, after looking at the maps of this project and the proposals, that I think have to be addressed. The map doesn’t show any existing trees. So it’s magically as if the site’s already cleared and ready to go. On the revised map, I counted only 58 trees to be replanted. So what we don’t know at this point is how many trees are going to actually be removed, what other vegetation is on site. There hasn’t been any type of a vegetative study done. Such a study would need to be done during the spring and summer months to get the full impact of the plant populations on site. The first handout that I gave you is called, on the top Northern Hardwoods Conifer Forest. This is a list that’s taken from the Harker Landscape Restoration Handbook, which is a guide that’s used in restoring degraded landscapes and preserving landscapes that are intact. It’s endorsed by the National Golf Association and also by the National Audubon Association, and what I did was I copied this, and then I went through it, and in bold type are the species that I have personally observed in the neighborhood, living there for the last 10 years, on my own property, on the Robertson’s property on Walkup Road, on the Milman/Taft property to the northwest of this, and on the Huber’s property, and you’ll see that it gives canopy characteristic species. These would be the trees that you would find as typical large scale trees. Associates are trees that would grow, that are usually found with this. I have the woody under story, and then again, herbaceous under story. So this is a very diverse landscape. The engineer stated that it’s not a significant habitat. As I go on with my comments, I’m going to beg to differ. I really believe this is a very significant habitat. Now the applicant proposes replacing a very diverse landscape with one species, white pine, and I would say, just briefly, let’s remember the lesson of the American Elm, which was planted as a mono-culture. That is simply one species of tree along a road. When Dutch Elm disease arrived in the Americas, it didn’t have far to go, as the trees roots were all connected under the ground. So when you have a diverse, living landscape of plants, and you have a pest or insect disease, it usually stops when it reaches a species that it can’t use as a host. So you’re replacing a diverse landscape with a mono-culture. I’ve also compiled another list. These are animals that I’ve observed in the Tee Hill/Moon Hill/Bay Road area, and I’ve given you their, both their common and scientific names, and I handed these out at one of our neighborhood meetings, and I had quite a few people give them back to me with additions of animals that they had observed, and you’ll notice that there’s a large number of bird species here. We also have quite a few reptiles and amphibians. The Glen Lake brook corridor flows through there. The engineer is right. This piece of land is an island bordered by roads, and that’s precisely what makes the tree cover so important here. The animals use this to move about, and you have to look at the way animals travel from their point of view. They’re following routes that their ancestors have followed since the last ice age. So these are ingrained patterns that they’re born with. They follow these routes, and this vegetative cover is what enables them to survive in this area, and most of the animal species are going to be territorial, and I’ll give you the example of the American Cardinal, which occupies a niche in our eco system. If you clear a lot where a Cardinal lives, it can’t simply move to the next lot because there’s probably already a Cardinal there. So it doesn’t have anywhere to go. It ends up dying. Now the removal of the trees and the leaf litter, and the leaf litter in particular, exacerbates the noise pollution in the area, and what studies have shown is that opening large tracts of over an acre in forested lands leads to a decline in the surrounding or adjacent woodlands and natural areas, due to invasion by exotics, and I mean things like Deterian Honeysuckle, which is becoming a pest along our roads, Oriental Bittersweet, Purple Lew Stripped is a good example, and when Mr. Strough asked about noxious weeds, these are precisely the types of things that I’m talking about, and the problem with these exotics is, they don’t have checks and balances in our eco system. There’s no insect that eats the leaves or animal that feeds on them. So they can run rampant through the landscape. Noise from the equipment for an unknown duration disturbs not only the human population but 20 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) is disruptive to wildlife reproductive cycles, particularly migratory bird populations which are vulnerable during their breeding season, and the Glen Lake brook corridor, again, and the adjacent wetland, Dream Lake, Glen Lake, Lake Sunnyside, this is an important corridor for birds. Now I’ve given you another sheet, and I’m sorry to inundate you with all this, but I felt it was important, on microrisal fungi, and microrisal fungi are symbiotic fungi that live in the soil, and they grow in conjunction with the roots of plants. They enable plants to take up water and nutrients. So they’re beneficial. In return, the trees provide nutrients to them to sustain themselves, and what’s happening here with this type of a project, is not only are you removing the trees that support this life, but you’re removing the very soil which is alive with bacteria and fungi that support the plant growth. So it’s kind of a Catch-22. You’re removing the fungi that support the plants. You’re removing the plants that support the fungi. So the denuded soil, after this project, will not support quality growth because these plants are dependent upon this. What you’re doing, in effect, is disrupting the entire food chain of an area. The soil is essentially dead, and I have another handout back here that has the characteristics of mine soil, and mine soil is a mixture of earth and rock materials left to serve as the medium for plants after extraction, shaping and grading. Characteristics of mine soil, low or no organic matter, low Ph, heavy metals, high salt, especially sodium, poor soil structure, very sandy or stony or clay textural extremes, low fertility, sloping, practical sterile, lacks this microrisal fungi and risobium bacteria, and your result is poor rooting, drought stress, nutrient deficiency, poor plant spread or ground cover, erosion, agriculturally unproductive or poor wildlife habitat. Now one other element that’s present, elements actually, I should say, in the soil, are micronutrients, and two of these would be calcium and magnesium, and calcium and magnesium are formed by the breakdown of rock, and if any of you have rocks in your yard and you think about how long it must take a rock to break down, you realize that these are very slowly released into the soil. Then they’re taken up by trees and stored as part of the lifecycle of the plant. When the tree dies or in the fall when it sheds its leaves, all these nutrients are recycled. So not only are you removing the biomass from the site, you’re removing the living organisms from the soil that would allow it to recover if you were just cutting a few trees. You’re also taking the calcium and magnesium that the plants need to grow off of the site, and by removing the strata, the sub strata, the rock and gravel, you’re ensuring that that’s not there for future plant growth. This is why clear cut areas do not support quality growth, and just to give you an example, a clear cut area, with its soil intact from time of clear cutting to time of full re-growth, is about 300 years or four human lifetimes. Most of the woodlands in our neighborhood I estimate between 60 and 100 years old. Now there’s, this area is also the watershed for Lake Sunnyside, and it’s, indeed, on their Homeowners Association map. You raised earlier about diesel fuel, and we’re being told by the engineer that the soil is very well drained and there won’t be problem for water to drain away, well that’s also true of contaminants into the groundwater. The other thing is a water study was done to test the water table. We’re in the middle of a drought. That’s been going on since August. So I don’t think that that could be an accurate study of the water table, not under current conditions. If this contaminant, or contaminants, get into the water system, we’re on wells in this part of Queensbury. Does the applicant have a plan to supply us with drinking water, if the water becomes contaminated? Basically, this is a project for fill, and he said it himself that he wants fill for his other project. So he’s unlikely to spend money to replace topsoil or install a sprinkler system to water the pine trees, and I noted, when I came to the Town to get the Short Environmental Assessment Form that was filled out, on Question Nine, his agent was asked, What is the present land use in the vicinity of the project, and instead of checking residential or park/open space, he checked other and wrote in vacant, as if we don’t live there. So, Queensbury’s motto, and I see this on the letterheads, is “Home of Natural Beauty….a good place to live”, and this precisely describes Moon Hill and the area around it. It is a beautiful area, that’s why I live there. I have property that’s on the Glen Lake brook corridor. It’s fantastic. If you look on the back of the animal observations, Pileated Woodpeckers. In the different areas of Queensbury I’ve lived in, I have never seen so many Pileated Woodpeckers as we have in this particular part, and Pileated Woodpeckers are reclusive. They do not nest in young, immature woodlands or open areas. The large number of plant and animal species that have been observed here indicate that this is a functioning, a highly functioning eco system that, in my opinion, would be severely disrupted by the proposed project. So we’ve heard that the zoning has been changed, and that, I think, should give you a little pause, that the Town has seen fit to remove this as a permitted use because it is destructive and it’s not compatible with residential areas. This doesn’t enhance our quality of life. It doesn’t contribute to Queensbury’s natural beauty. It removes the topography of an area, and the identity and character of an area is identified not only by its structures and its people but also by topography and vegetation, and if you remove any of these components, in large part, you destroy that character. This is another issue with the character of our area, and I read in the newspaper articles, the applicant said, well, he’s concerned about the character, but I have to take pause because every day I drive past the Town office buildings and see these buildings across the street, which everyone I know in Queensbury refers to as “The Barracks”. What was there before was a meadow, and there is no remnant of that meadow left. It is gone, completely. So, I think some of the issues that have been raised tonight, according to what I’ve read in SEQRA, it requires an EIS if there’s just one adverse environmental impact identified, and I think we have a whole range of them here, but I would urge you to reject this. This will definitely destroy our neighborhood. We have six or seven sand pits that haven’t been reclaimed. We really don’t need another one, and I thank you for your time. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. Next is John Curry, 118 Bay Road. JOHN CURRY 21 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MR. CURRY-Just as a means of qualifying what I’m about to say, I served, for several years, as the traffic supervisor for the State Police and Troop G, during which time we did accident studies, highway surveys, anything that dealt with highway safety. I appreciate the opportunity to bring to your attention some of the facts that I hope you will consider as you make your decision, that could affect safety, as well as quality of life for many of us in the room tonight, and those would could not be here. My primary concern addresses overall traffic safety and some of the risk factors that I hope you’ll consider as you review the application before you. Some of these risk factors are inherent to motor vehicle transportation on all highways, and they’re based on environmental or weather conditions, human factors, or mechanical failures, and while we have made great strides in improving highway infrastructure, driver’s licensing qualifications and vehicle manufacturing standards, there is little that can be done at this level to influence those factors. However, as part of the planning process, there are some risk factors that can be controlled by this Board, and can have a significant impact on traffic safety on the highways within our Town. The Bay Road, which is County Route Seven, is a major north/south corridor between the City of Glens Falls, the shopping centers of Queensbury, and State Route 149, as well as for those residents who reside in the northern wards of our Town. As a result of the recent construction on Route 149, and the ongoing delays resulting from congestion at the Route 9 outlet shops, many heavy trucks, including tractors and semi-trailers, cargo tanks containing chemicals and gasoline, tour buses and other commercial vehicles have discovered that Bay Road is a convenient link to Interstate 87. Although Bay Road is not a State highway, it has turned into a busy connector between State highways. The recent development of professional offices along this corridor has also had a further impact on the number of vehicles using the busy corridor. One need only watch the number of vehicles coming and going at Adirondack Community College to attest to the daily traffic density, and just recently, we’ve introduced another significant change to the highway infrastructure with the new Bay Ridge Firehouse, which will result in emergency vehicles entering the highway, on a curve, with a downgrade, with limited sight distance, just around the corner from Moon Hill Road, and of course the Fane gravel pit on Dream Lake Road has resulted in 100’s, if not collectively 1,000’s, of heavy dump trucks traveling Bay Road over the last few years. In addition to the vehicle traffic, I’ve personally observed numerous bicyclists, joggers and pedestrians on Bay Road, during the good weather months. Although there may be many peripheral factors that could affect safety in conjunction with this application under consideration tonight, there are two basic and obvious risk factors that I feel can be controlled by the decision of this Board. The first deals with the introduction of numerous heavy vehicles traveling through an intersection that already has a horrendous safety record. I’ve lived in this area almost all my life and can remember numerous accidents that have occurred at the intersection of Bay Road and County Route 63 to the west, County Route 54 to the east. I requested, and I guess I should say I purchased, to the tune of $75, a survey from the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, which gave me a report of the accidents that have occurred in the last few years, and have also acquired a similar report from the Warren County Sheriff’s Office for the last five years. They indicate that no fewer than 12 accidents have occurred at the intersection in the last five years involving 22 vehicles with 18 persons injured, some of them seriously. Eleven of the twelve accidents reported occurred during daylight hours, with only one occurring during the hours of darkness. Ten of those accidents involved two vehicles colliding at right angles, and the other two were the result of vehicles swerving off the road to avoid colliding with another vehicle that had already entered the intersection. Why have these middle of the day accidents occurred at this location? The short sight distance appears to be a major cause of these accidents. Nine of the operators involved in these accidents were ticketed for failing to yield the right of way from a stop sign. Assuming that none of these operators was suicidal, and deliberately pulled out in front of oncoming traffic, it is likely that they were not able to see the approaching traffic until they were well into the intersection and too close to avoid a collision. Based on reference material provided by the Northwestern University Traffic Accident Reconstruction Manual, which I have used previously in my former employment and still in use today, using the average co-efficient of friction or drag factors for dry, traveled asphalt surface, the distance required to stop a vehicle with good brakes, traveling a 45 miles per hour, is approximately 106 meters, or 350 feet, from the time of the full brake application. For the same roadway as wet asphalt traveled surface, the distance increases to 140 meters, or approximately 466 feet. The drag factor can be significantly influenced by loose particulates such as sand or loose gravel on the roadway, increasing the stopping distance. The reaction time, from the point of visual recognition of the impending hazard, to the full application of the brakes, averages approximately three-quarters of one second for an average, alert driver. A vehicle traveling 45 miles per hour travels approximately 66 feet during that three-quarters of a second. The combined reaction in stopping distance at 45 miles per hour on dry road is about 416 feet, and on wet road is about 532 feet. Once again, these figures are for a vehicle traveling 45 miles an hour with an alter operator having normal reaction time. The ratio of distance to reaction time increases with speed, and at 55 miles per hour, the vehicle travels about 81 feet before the brake is applied. Combined reaction time distance and skid distance at 55 miles per hour on a dry road is approximately 597 feet. Do vehicles often exceed the 45 mile per hour speed limit on Bay Road, and are all drivers capable of reacting within that average time, and will all drivers immediately perceive a hazard as soon as they see a truck ahead of them on Bay Road? Please consider also that ice and snow can increase the stopping distance at 45 miles an hour to over 650 feet from the time the brakes are applied. With heavy dump truck vehicles slowly accelerating upon entering he intersection, it is highly probably that there will be more of the type of collisions that have previously been reported. I personally measured the distance from the point where a southbound driver could expect to see a vehicle entering Bay Road from the eastbound lane of Moon Hill Road at the stop sign, and found it to be a maximum of 582 feet. This vision distance was measured using my four-wheel drive truck with a higher line of sight than the average automobile. The lower operator position, with an average automobile, would shorten that sight distance due to the upgrade and the curvature of the roadway. The second factor I’d like to 22 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) cite is the fact that these heavy vehicles, traveling at slow speeds, as they shift up through the gears, are often traveling at speeds much lower than the speed limit and take a longer distance to get up to the median speed of the traffic flow. During this time, many motorists are tempted to pass the slow moving truck, even though they are in a no passing zone. I can personally attest to that fact, since I have witnessed numerous vehicles traveling south on Bay Road pull out and pass on the double solid line markings in front of my house, often accompanied by a blast of their horn to indicate their impatience with the slow moving truck that had just entered the Fane gravel pit from Dream Lake Road. On more than one occasion there were vehicles, and on one occasion a bicyclist approaching from the opposite direction. I can envision the same scenario on the Bay Road south of the Moon Hill Road intersection where that sight distance, approaching northbound traffic is even more limited. As you can see, the factors I’ve pointed out, as well as others that may have been or will be made tonight, when applied to this location, will present an unacceptable level of risk. In my opinion, the responsible decision for the Planning Board to make is to deny this application for a mining permit since the resultant risks to the majority of Town residents and users of our highways far outweigh the benefits to the individual seeking this use for the property in question. The gravel required to improve the applicant’s proposed developments is currently available to be drawn from existing pits that do not present the safety hazards. Thank you for this opportunity to be heard, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions that the Board may have. MR. MAC EWAN-We’ll move on to the next speaker. Thanks. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Next is Jeannine O’Connell, 77 Surrey Fields. JEANNINE O’CONNELL MRS. O’CONNELL-My name is Jeannine O’Connell. I am on the Board for the Surrey Field Homeowners Association. We have 42 houses in our development. The majority of residents are senior citizens who get their exercise by walking. Our major concern deals with traffic. We’re talking about pedestrian traffic and bicycle traffic. We live in a very dangerous area off of Bay Road, from Woodlands, going north on Bay, there are no shoulders on the road, and many of our residents walk or bike along the road. Leaving our development going south, they like to ride and try to connect in to the bike trail. They have to round a dangerous curve that is right in front of the Woodlands development, and we are very concerned about the increased truck traffic by this proposed mining. We also are concerned, going north on Bay, most of our senior citizens probably will be mad at me when I say that their reactions in driving are not as quick as they once were, and a slowing down and having to come to a full stop, turning into the Woodlands development or turning into the Surrey Field development, is very dangerous. Quite often cars following them have to hit the brakes to avoid hitting them. We have seen instances where cars have actually passed a stopped vehicle that is attempting to turn left into one of those two developments. We also think that the property for the proposed mining is a beautiful piece of property, and we feel that this property would be destroyed with this mining operation. I thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Next is Lara Currie, Bay Road. LARA CURRIE MRS. CURRIE-Hi. My name is Lara Currie, and I live at 1118 Bay Road. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Planning Board and the Staff . I know the Planning Board is a volunteer position, and I think that you put in tons and tons of time. I don’t have any prepared comments. I think you’ll be happy to hear that. I would just like to say that many of us that live in the area live there for a reason. We like to garden. We work outside a lot. There are also a lot of people that are either retired. There’s a lot of people that work shift work, and there are many of us who work out of our houses. So the argument about the truck traffic not being significant or not being pertinent because it’s going to happen during the daytime doesn’t work in many of these situations. I would also like to say that people move to Queensbury, a lot of people in our neighborhood have made a significant investment in their homes. They’ve done this. It’s their life savings, and I think that it would be very irresponsible to take one man’s financial gain and offset any kind of lifetime financial investment that people have made in their homes. I would also like to say that five years of truck traffic, construction noise, and mining operation is absolutely untenable. That’s a very long time. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Joan Bovee. JOAN BOVEE MRS. BOVEE-My name is Joan Bovee. I live at One Lakeview Drive, which is right down the hill from the proposed pit. I have a copy of Marilyn VanDyke, the Town Historian’s, letter, which you have. I was hoping you would read it. I’m not going to read the whole thing, only that she has suggested to you, the Planning Board, that maybe an archeological study, historical study, would be done of this area, and you did mention that earlier. There have been several Indian artifacts found in the area of, on the other side of Bay Road, 23 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) going south, in the Oudekerk and Harris, and Zverblis properties over the years, which suggests that there may have been Indians in this area, maybe north, maybe west, and maybe that’s something that should be looked into she suggested, and then I have some concerns about the traffic and the noise. You talk about Fanes. I hear them all summer long, the beeping of the trucks, the chug, chug, chug of filling up and digging out the fill that they’re putting in the trucks. One time last summer it was 5:30 in the morning that I heard the beepers on the trucks from Fane’s pits across the lake, and it’s very annoying, and I’m there most of the time, and another great concern I have is the traffic on Sunnyside Road which has not been brought up, but apparently Schermerhorn’s trucks will not be traveling Sunnyside Road anymore, or for this project, because when they do, along with Fane’s trucks, it’s very dangerous. I’ve walked that. I’ve walked Walkup Road. I walk Bay Road. They’re all dangerous because nobody follows the speed limit, and I’m walking a dog usually, and it’s like sometimes I have to jump out of the way, especially on Sunnyside Road, and there are going to be more trucks and the noise from them is going to be heard just as much as from Fane trucks, and the natural beauty that’s going to be destroyed by taking the trees down, taking the hill down, and displacing the wildlife is unacceptable to me. I mean, I have walked up there. I’ve walked up the hill, and it’s quite a hike up there. It’s not just a level piece of property. It’s quite a hike up that hill, if anybody has walked it, and there is, I’m sure, a lot of wildlife. I have seen, myself, about three years ago, I saw a moose in that area, which probably a lot of people have never seen, and it was amazing. It was on the south side of Moon Hill Road, right in, the first house to the left, right before the first house on the left hand side of Moon Hill Road because, Cathy I believe is your name, you talked about seeing the mountain lions and, there was a moose over there. There’s plenty of other animals in that area. So I would urge you, please, to turn down this proposal. We don’t need the eyesore, and we don’t need all the noise and the trucks. Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-The moose beats my bobcat. I’m sorry, but I left Roberta Barili out, Roberta. ROBERTA BARILI MRS. BARILI-My name is Roberta Barili. I live on Walkup Road, which, as you look at the map, is to the north of the proposed site, and we live on the east end. Actually, we live right in the middle. My dad lives on the east end of Walkup Road. We look at the back of the piece of property that is being discussed tonight. I’m not an attorney so I don’t have a lot of knowledge on the legal issues, and I’m not an engineer, so I can’t address all the runoff from the drain off and the water gathering things. I’m not a contractor, but I am a citizen of Queensbury and have been such in this particular spot since 1976, so what I can tell you is why my husband and I, all these years, have tried to remain where we are, because it’s becoming extremely difficult to do so. We stay there because of the diversity of the area. We stay there because there are hills, there are trees, there are places to walk, there are animals. It is relatively safe, if you can dodge the traffic that has increased over the past five years. We would like to see it stay that way. We would like to have an area of Queensbury that is not flat. I don’t understand why everything has to be flat, and at road level. My house is built on a hill. We built it in 1976, on a rather large hill. Our driveway is not paved. It’s not macadam’d. It’s got a stone base and has crushed stone on the top and it’s been there for the past, since 1976, and we’ve not lost it yet. We don’t have difficulty in the wintertime getting in and out, nor do we in the summer, so the piece of property that’s being discussed is, indeed, in my estimation, which is obviously an amateur, but we did it, as have the other people that live in the area, Mr. Mitchell has built a house right next to this site and has a very large driveway. It is very doable and there would be some fantastic views off of the top of that piece of property. My objection to the project, and the only reason, I wasn’t even going to speak tonight because you have so many eloquent speakers that are making so many wonderful points, but my objection is very basic, in that we’re talking about dropping a mining operation, and this is not a grading operation. Grading operations don’t take five years and they don’t take a 60 foot hill and bring it down to road level. You’re dropping this operation in the middle of a rural residential area. It’s intrusive. It’s self serving, it’s short-sighted and as far as I am concerned, it is an irresponsible use of that piece of property. If, indeed, the need is for sand, then why not drop this operation in the middle of some place that’s already flat, drop it in the middle of Hiland Park. Put it in the middle of Courthouse Estates. Put it some place where the access to the dirt is easier. We’re taking a hill and bringing it down flat, and we’re taking a hill that used to be a wetlands, and we’re bringing it up and making that flat and at road level. I beg this Board to please slow the slaughter of the trees in this area. Stop the homogenization of landscapes in Queensbury. We don’t need that in this particular area. I, too, thank you, and applaud the effort and the insight that you have. Just listening to your comments tonight, it’s obvious that you’re zeroing in on many of the same concerns that we have. We, as citizens, need your support, need your help, and I feel encouraged by what I’ve heard here tonight. Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Kevin Thompson, Moon Hill Road. KEVIN THOMPSON MR. THOMPSON-I’ll keep this short. I’ve lived at the base of Moon Hill Road since 1992. The reason why I moved here was because it’s a peaceful place for me to raise my daughter. I enjoy taking many walks up Moon Hill, and I enjoy the scenery, and I enjoy the peacefulness of this area. To me, this proposed project is definitely self-serving. I don’t believe it’s going to impact our neighborhood at all, and I’m just totally opposed to it. I think that if this proposed project was in any of your back yard’s, you’d feel the same way. I don’t want to listen to noise and I don’t want to have the effects of the pollution or anything else. I am 24 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) concerned about my well and what this is going to have on the quality of my water, and I do have a beautiful stream that runs through the back yard of my property. I do see many different varieties of wildlife, and I just don’t see a purpose in this. Digging a hill to put the dirt some place else, I can’t comprehend where that’s going to benefit anybody. Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Mark Dickinson, Moon Hill Road? Phil Mitchell? PHIL MITCHELL MR. MITCHELL-I’m Phil Mitchell. My home is next to the proposed strip mine, and I’d like to start by listing a few things I’m thankful for. I’m thankful for my health and my family, of course, and I’m thankful for this, what is my dream house on the woods, on a hill, with mountain views and a quiet neighborhood community with good schools. That’s all great stuff. I’m also thankful for all of you folks that serve the public interest, all of you volunteers in the Planning and Zoning Boards. This has been an interesting opportunity for me to meet my neighbors. We’ve gotten together a few times to discuss this issue. I’ve listened to a lot of them tonight, a lot of interesting, decent, friendly, concerned people living near me. I also got to meet Tom Nace and Rich Schermerhorn, and they seem like nice people, too, even if the proposed project is wrong, and lastly I’m thankful that this is a nation under God, with liberty and justice for all, and God’s law is summarized as love God and secondly love your neighbor as yourself, and these fundamental laws can be applied to the issue here tonight actually. Firstly, property and profits and a lifetime of savings are important, but they’re not everything. Not even love of life and family and health should come before the higher purpose, but depending on the decision of the Board tonight, a corporation might save some money by using a residential neighborhood property for an industrial purpose. At the same time, legitimate, permanent, environmentally controlled mining operations will lose an opportunity to sell their product, or, depending on the Board’s decision, dozens of families represented here will continue to enjoy the wooded neighborhood environment, a quiet, wooded environment many of us invested much of our life savings for, a clean, quiet, wooded neighborhood we trusted zoning and planning would preserve. Just a little more on that topic, I thought about buying that property next to mine. It was kind of pricey, but I knew it would make a great building lot. I walked it a couple of times, but I said, you know, I’m not a developer. That’s not my thing, and I know that the Planning Board would probably protect me, that that place was zoned residential and big lots. Somebody puts up a home a fair distance from my place, it’ll be a nice one, I figured, but the second issue here is love your neighbor as yourself, and you’ve got to love Rich Schermerhorn. He’s a good guy. He’s very positive about his projects. He told me his dump trucks and loaders are fairly quiet, and they probably are, compared to some dump trucks and loaders, and he told me he can strip mine a sand pit without making dust. He told me not to call it a pit, but he’s a good guy. He’s come here and he gets things done, and he’s using the planning process and he’s open about his project, and he has attempted to address a lot of the issues, but I think he may have deluded himself into thinking this outdoor industry, in a residential neighborhood, will not hurt anybody. It’s very human to justify something that’s wrong. As a neighbor who cares, I want to reveal and make real to everyone that the proposed project hurts a significant number of people in a significant way. Now empathy is feeling what others feel. Empathy is what the Board must use to decide this issue, and I think you’ve got it. You’ve got most of the main points. There are many criteria listed on which to judge the site plan review, but very few specific limits, I noticed. What I ask is that you see those whose homes are near the proposed mine as people. I ask that you put yourself in our position when judging if there is a significant environmental impact. For example, from my house, the Fane operation on Dream Lake Road, about a mile and a half away, is a minor annoyance due to noise. I ignore it. However, those around Dream Lake, when the operation started, must have thought it criminal. Imagine enjoying time at a rural lake cottage, when those first trucks rolled through. It must have been something. Another example to bring this close to home. What if I had driven past your homes or offices with a loudspeaker playing the sounds recorded at strip mine, or rap music or something like that, some other horrific thing, what if I cause toxic silica dust to fall on your car and in your house, forced it into your lungs? What if I did these things day after day, for a month, or sixty months? What if I chose to replace some of the environment you enjoy with something abhorrent. What if I took away what you spent your life savings on, with the promise, I plan to return something similar in five years. I’d be in jail right now, but the real detrimental effects of this project would become real and significant to each of you on the Planning Board. What we originally thought in our groups is that I would go first and then a bunch of the neighbors would speak tonight, would have, would focus on one particular issue, even though they may feel equally concerned about many of the negative and/or unspecified aspects of the proposed project. We were going to go through this in the order of, as the items appear in Code Section 179-39, Development Considerations. You’ve heard from a lot of them already and they gave excellent presentations, and John Strough and all of you have collected the letters that document a lot of this stuff. So I’m going to go either really fast or skip a lot of it. one other thing I want to stress is I read through that SEQRA law, and it places the responsibility of lead agency on the Planning Board for this, and while this proposed project does not trigger explicitly stated Type One conditions that require an EIS, for example a project or action that involves physical alteration of ten acres, we’re pretty darn close to ten acres, if you count the whole site, despite the fact that it’s not all mined. That sort of thing would make an environmental impact statement mandatory, or at least environmental assessment form. It’s obvious to me that the likelihood of a significant environmental impact would make the lead agency obligated to request an EIS for this action. You read down, Section 617-4, Type One Actions, and what you’ll see is that the purpose of the list of Type One Actions in this Section is to identify 25 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) for agencies, project sponsors and the public those actions and projects that are more likely to require the preparation of an EIS than Unlisted Actions. MR. MAC EWAN-Mr. Mitchell. MR. MITCHELL-You know all that. MR. MAC EWAN-Yes, we do, and I would ask you if it would be possible for you to just summarize, so that we can get to all the rest of our speakers as well. MR. MITCHELL-I will. I’ll try to do that, and I’ll hand you this stuff so you can read it at your leisure. MR. MAC EWAN-Give it to Staff when you’re done, if you would, please. MR. MITCHELL-Okay. Beyond that, I think most of the things that we’ve done, most of the things that I talk about here have been captured, notes that mostly by John Strough, and his questions. Did we hear about toxic silica dust here? Have you talked about the toxicity of silica dust? Are you familiar with that? You are? Okay. So you know that it acts like asbestos and has MSDS’s that go with it and things like that. I’m giving you copies of those and a complete description of how silica dust kills people. I want to point out that diesel smell isn’t what I anticipated in this rural neighborhood. Here’s some other things that haven’t come up before. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m going to give you two minutes. MR. MITCHELL-It’s going to be way less than two minutes. I’m on the last page right here. It’s a paragraph or less. Tom Nace, he did a nice job with his drawings and what not, but what he didn’t point out was, on that drawing right there, he’s got a nice curved road which is requested by excavation portion of the Code, that you want a curved entry road to something you’re going to excavate. That’s all great. He’s excavating a hillside. A hillside is 50 feet up in the air. You’re going to see that from everywhere. Finally I want to show you a couple of pictures to bring this home to you, what 100 feet is and what that might mean. Right here is a picture of my house, standing on my property line. That’s 100 feet away. It’s taken with kind of a cheap little camera, wide angle, two inches. What I have is two pictures and what they show is, what they show is my house at 100 feet, and they show some trucks kind of crudely penciled in there, to scale, at 100 foot level from my property line. What you see is this stuff is close to my house. It’s definitely, it’s right there. I’m going to hear it. I’m going to see it. I’m going to smell it. It’s right there. I am going to be part of this project. This is very, very close, despite the fact it’s a 100 foot buffer which sounds like a lot, and here’s a sand pit, in case you haven’t seen one, but they’re not pretty, at least not by my view, and you can dwell on that some more. You can see the views I’ve got, if you look a little closer, I’m going to hand these to you, but if you look a little closer, you can see the views down the hill. It’s a nice area. My house is way up on the same hill that these guys are going to take down. You can build a house there. It’s a great place for a house, and I guess I probably overstayed my welcome is what Mr. MacEwan is telling me, so, thank you all again. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Greg Robertson. GREG ROBERTSON MR. ROBERTSON-I really don’t have anything prepared, but Phil took all my time. So I’ll make it short. All of you folks I saw, were there last week. I appreciate the fact that you came out, and you can see that it’s a beautiful place to live, and one of the things, we got a surprise this week, my wife and I, a woman had driven by our house, they live on Walkup Road, which is down near the stream across from the property that’s in question, and a woman had been driving by and took the time to go to the Town to find out who owned the property because they wanted to buy that property and live there, and I really don’t think that would be the case if this proposed pit mine goes through, and the trees that will be destroyed, as everyone has spoken about, it’ll take half a century for them to be replaced, and a few little pine trees that the engineer proposed is ludicrous. I mean, look at how long it takes to grow a Christmas Tree, and it’s absurd, and I do hope that you’ll reject this proposal and I thank you for your time. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Frank Zverblis? MR. MAC EWAN-Next name. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. Next is Theresa, Ed & Theresa Dennis? All right. Craig & Jean Haley? MR. SANFORD-Cathy, did all these people indicate they want to speak? 26 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes, I think so. AUDIENCE MEMBER-We thought, as we came in the room, that everyone was signing in as an attendee. I was never told that I had to sign any separate paper in order to speak. MRS. LA BOMBARD-So you aren’t on here? AUDIENCE MEMBER-I’m on the list that was over there in the corner, if that’s the list you’re talking about. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s the list we’re going by. AUDIENCE MEMBER-Keep going. You’re doing fine. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Thank you. I just can’t read some of these names. I have a Bombard. Okay. What’s your first name? JAMES BOMBARD MR. BOMBARD-James. MRS. LA BOMBARD-James, okay. Come on down. MR. BOMBARD-Well, I thank you for letting me speak, and I live at 625 Moon Hill Road, which is across from the end of Tee Hill Road, and I’m across the street from the outlet of Glen Lake, and I just had a couple of points I wanted to say. You weren’t sure about the tonnage rating. That road is County maintained until the top of the hill, from Bay Road to the top of, I believe it’s Walkup Cutoff Road it’s called, but it’s past Tee Hill Road, past Martindale Road, which is that road to the left hand corner, the top of that hill, Oxbow Hill Road, and that’s rated at six ton on the sign they just put up there last week or two weeks ago, because of the frost. That’s a County maintained road. It’s only rated six ton, from what I understand, which your attorneys can find out, from that point to the corner of Bay Road, which would be part of what you want to use as your access road, which would deny him that two months when that’s posted that way. So that would be something you’d probably want to look into before you issue that, and that stream, I have another stream that borders the back side of my lake that comes off of French Mountain that dumps into the outlet of Glen Lake, which is the inlet for Dream Lake. That stream that’s bordering his proposed mine is the inlet of Dream Lake. That’s swimming and drinking water for people on Dream Lake. It goes out of Dream Lake and it does dump into Halfway Brook. It crosses Ridge Road, goes underneath Ridge Road, and where it meets, I believe it’s east Sunnyside Road, there’s a second stream, that is Halfway Brook, and this proposed stream does connect into Halfway Brook, which is a trout stream, and that stream is, on my map, which is a 1932 deeded map, is a rated BT Trout Stream, which is “B” for Aquatic, “T” for Trout. So they’re putting a mine beside a trout stream, which I think is definitely going to impact it, and according to what, if I understand correctly, his engineer is saying, is right now that property is pitched toward the stream and will be changed and pitched towards a catch basin, and my only concern is that during this proposed mine operation, is that for five years that’s going to be pitched toward the stream and that could definitely affect Dream Lake water. I mean, the people, they use that for drinking water on Dream Lake, and I don’t know if those people are aware of it because they’re not notified by the current Town system of 500 feet, and that’s all I have to say. I appreciate your time. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Keith Barton? Betty Barton? AUDIENCE MEMBER-They left. MRS. LA BOMBARD-That’s too bad. Cindy Huber? CINDY HUBER MRS. HUBER-Hi. Thank you for letting us speak. This is from my heart. This isn’t technical. I live at 1037 Bay Road. Most every day, all year long, I take my dog Cody for a walk before and sometimes after work. I walk either around Sunnyside Lake or my triangle of Bay, Moon Hill, and Walkup Roads. The peace, tranquility and subtle beauty of the area has a calming, almost sedative effect on my otherwise hectic life. As the weather warms, we spend as much time in our yard and on our back deck as possible. We love being outdoors, and when the days warm up into summer, most of our meals are outside. The deck has been built because it is too noisy on our front porch, due to the dump trucks and other traffic going up and down Bay Road. This is where we watch the bats come out on warm evenings, and demonstrate their aerial acrobats, where once and a while a shy deer comes out to graze, where all kinds of birds sing for us, where the tree’s leaves turn from buds to leaves, to lovely autumn colors, making every season different and every year new as never before. Our grandchildren often come over, play in our yard. They help my garden and play in the playhouse Randy built for them in our back property. We know it’s a safe place here in Queensbury, and our 27 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) back yard. All this will change if Mr. Schermerhorn’s mining operation is approved. We can already hear the jake brakes, front end loaders, back up horns in the distance from Fane’s Dream Lake excavation property. Now we’ll have the full effect, up close and personal, as they say, with noise and the enchanting smell of diesel fuel. As I walk Cody along Walkup Road, as we hurry past their new Hall Road on Moon Hill, as the girls play in the tree house, how safe will our neighborhood in Queensbury be? Our homes, our gardens, our walks, and an area I love, a neighborhood that keeps us sane, a place where good people live, people I’ve been lucky enough to meet and count as friends, why do you want to end this? This is wrong. You can use Mr. O’Connor’s existing mine or Fane’s or buy property in an industrial area where this kind of operation belongs. He is a local man, brought up in a wonderful hometown atmosphere, and I don’t understand why he wants to ruin our beautiful place to live. If you were contractor planning to build a home or two this summer, I’d have no problem with you, Mr. Schermerhorn, but you’ve admitted you need the fill for your other projects, and that is why you want the property, and this is not acceptable. Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Joseph Ruiz? Steven & Carol Gibbs? STEVE GIBBS MR. GIBBS-My wife and I had five children, and when I was growing up, I came from a one parent family, split family, and I always said I’d locate my children near the water if I could. For 13 summers, from 1978 to 1991, we had a home up on Brant Lake. After my termination at Ceiba Geigy, I sold the place and I came back to Hudson Falls, and I lived on what I call a speedway, John Street in Hudson Falls for 37 years. I’ve been summering here since 1993, at 104 Sunnyside North, and have just purchased the property last year. As many of the seniors here, I find this quite a tranquil spot here and one of great beauty, and we’re concerned also about the ecological effect that this project would have, and also the effect that our grandchildren would derive from this project, breathing the dust and so forth, because summertime, when the kids are out of school, there are some young parents here also that have children, but we have, like I said, ten grandchildren from college age down to elementary age, and they come quite frequently to swim and enjoy the water. So I just want to make my wife and I’s objection heard. Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Charles Benson? Donna Sperry? We have the Casellas, Evelyn and Gene. GENE CASELLA MR. CASELLA-It’s a very tough act to follow. I didn’t realize I had written four letters. I guess I must have gotten pretty emotionally involved. I know that, at first, my very first writing had to do with my association with the Protective Association of Lake Sunnyside, of which I am a Trustee and Bob Huntz the President wasn’t there, and I put out something on our concerns about Lake Sunnyside, and I’m not even going to mention the other letters and what I had in them, because a lot of what has been said tonight had been mentioned in the letters. So what I want to do right now is just take, very briefly, my own situation, my wife and I. We moved out of New York City because we had serious problems with what was happening in the City. The place was going down a sink hole, and when we moved, we were trying to rear our children there, and the next thing we know, all of a sudden things started to disappear, toys, bikes, stuff like that. We were concerned about our health, and about our security, and so off we went, and we moved to a place, a northern suburb of New York City, on the other side of the Hudson River, by the Tappenzee Bridge, called Nyack, to a little hamlet that was right on the very edge of West Nyack called Valley Cottage. Valley Cottage was a hamlet that became a village that became a town and now borders on becoming a city. About a mile down the road from us, where we thought we were going to live for the rest of our lives, they built the worlds second largest mall, the Palisades Center, which is owned by our friends the Pyramid people, right here, who have our Mall right here we have so much concern about. So my wife and I couldn’t even get out on our roads, and this is where we thought we were going to live for the rest of our lives with our children. So we had to move again, and I even had to leave a job. I worked for one of the best companies I think in the world, that practiced what it preached, respect for the individual, but I had to leave it five years early. I had to retire early. My wife quit her job, and we looked for a place to live, and we looked in Florida, because I had a brother in Winter Haven. We looked in Virginia, because I have a daughter in Chesapeake, and we had neighbors who had moved out of Valley Cottage to the foothills of the Great Smokies of North Carolina, but my wife and I never forgot the seven days, the week that we spent every year up here vacationing at the Foothills of the Adirondacks, and we final realized that this is where we wanted to be, and so we moved here five years ago, and I challenge anybody in this room that thinks that they like, or love, this area, are concerned about this area more than my wife and I, even though we’re city folk. We love it here. We love what we see. We love what we have. We want to die here. This is where want to be. This is it, and now we begin to see things like, and by the way, I have no problem with Mr. Schermerhorn. He does some good things in this Town, and it is a shame that this particular issue is what it is right now, but my concern is that we can go around our ward here in Queensbury, Ward Five, and find seven or eight diggings that are on the map, by the way, and about another eight or nine that aren’t on the map. Right across the way, right opposite this endeavor we’re talking about, is a piece of property that’s been vacated and dug out, trees are falling down. There’s a cable across a dirt road right there that says no trespassing. Somebody vacated that, and down the road near Oxbow I see another piece of land that looks like it was vacated as well. How much of this is going to go on here? This is a beautiful, beautiful neighborhood. I mean, we have that saying on our Town paper, 28 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) right, a great place to live. My wife and I want to stay here. We don’t want to have to move again. Please, don’t do this. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Edward Hayes, and Andrea Hayes? You’ll pass? Okay. Todd Engwer? TODD ENGWER MR. ENGWER-My name’s Todd Engwer. I live at 647 Moon Hill Road. There’s just a few things I want to talk about. First I want to talk about what Mr. Strough brought up about traffic counts on Moon Hill Road. I called Bill Remington, the County Superintendent of Public Works. The most recent traffic count on Moon Hill Road which is also, it’s called County Route 63, dates back to 1996. Only 1715 vehicles were on that road. My first thought is that you shouldn’t allow this project until at least that particular issue is looked into, the traffic count on the road, for a number of reasons. First of all, every time they add a light on Quaker Road, traffic on our road increases because for some reason it’s become a short cut from 9 over. The traffic back up on Route 9 by the Great Escape in the summertime, everybody takes Glen Lake into Moon Hill out to Sunnyside. Currently, there’s been construction on 149, last summer, and I believe it’s going to continue. They’re up to about a little east of Martindale Road, and I think that in that same timeframe is projected when this project is going to go on, and one of the things I’m concerned about is that quite often they use Martindale to Moon Hill to Bay to 149 as a detour, not only when they’re working for construction, but just as recent as the other day when there’s an accident and you have a lot of truck traffic on that road. So I think definitely a traffic study on Moon Hill Road needs to be done. There’s increased development over the years in our area, Sherwood Acres, etc., and the bicycle and pedestrian traffic on that road has increased tremendously since I was a kid. I’ve lived there all my life. So I think that, you know, that should be looked into. It gets a lot of use in the summertime when probably the majority of the mining might be taking place. Americade people, bikes used to be through there all the time, and they go up to that hill at a pretty high rate of speed. I don’t think it would be unreasonable to expect to have an accident with the trucks coming out onto Moon Hill Road. I don’t remember her name, but you talked about site view and etc., and I wonder if in these studies that she did that if they took into account pedestrian and bike traffic on both Bay Road and on Moon Hill Road, because it has increased significantly. The next scheduled traffic study by the County for Moon Hill Road is not due until this summer. So that’s just something I wanted to bring up about that. About the vibration with trucks going by, the road, when they plow in the winter, it shakes now. It’s not really suited well to have a lot of heavy truck use. So I think, you know, that should be considered. The other thing they talked about is, Mr. Sanford brought it up, I don’t know Mr. Schermerhorn. I know he’s done a lot of work in the Town, and probably the Town’s been good to him, and vice versa, but in the event you do go ahead with this project, and it’s my hope that you don’t, that he should put in something that will benefit everybody in the Town. There’s a deeded right of way on Moon Hill Road, owned by the County, 25 feet from the center line. There’s no reason that they couldn’t, he couldn’t install a bike or pedestrian lane on that road, and fund it for the County, to at least assist with the safety, not only while his project’s going on, but for the benefit of all the citizens in Queensbury. I’ve approached the County. They’re interested, however there is a financial hardship at this point. It’s just a thought I had, but I think that those issues, along the lines of safety, need to be looked into. I don’t really have anything else. I do have one other thing. They talked about traffic studies on Bay Road. The last one that the County did was in 1991. They came up with 5,107 vehicles. She quoted 6300 per day now, and I don’t know if that, how she arrived at that study, if it was a typical line count type thing or some other method, and if that’s accurate, and if that, in fact, does effect, is affected by the way the traffic’s going to be detoured around 149 when that project’s going on, at the same time that this project will be undertaken. So those are just a few of the traffic concerns I have, and safety wise. Aesthetically, noise, they worked on 149 all summer. There’s a significant distance between my house and 149, and you can see the tractors, or you could hear the noise of the trucks and tractors, etc. A few trees in between are not going to reduce the amount of noise. It’s irritating at the very least. So, thank you for your time. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Jim Diccicio? JIM DICCIO MR. DICCIO-Do you want to use my time, Phil? Pass. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay, Jim. Jackie Brown? JACKIE BROWN MS. BROWN-That’s me. I’ll pass. Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. Jeff Kane? James Bombard, Jr., Moon Hill Road? Michael Shpunt? MICHAEL SHPUNT 29 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MR. SHPUNT-I also wrote the Board a letter, but I didn’t hear my name mentioned. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Did you send it to me, Michael? MR. SHPUNT-Yes. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. Because I didn’t, I think I have more than has been received. MR. HUNSINGER-I did as well, Cathy. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Yes, that’s what I remember reading it now, yes, it’s right here. I am terribly sorry, but they were all going to go into the record, sooner or later. So don’t think I forgot about them. MR. MAC EWAN-Sooner rather than later. MR. SCHACHNER-Yes. We need to understand how that’s going to work. If any Board members received letters at your private residences, you’re going to have to, if they’re going to be considered, they have to be brought to the Board and made available to all the Board members, and made part of the formal record. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Before this meeting tonight or during this meeting? MR. SCHACHNER-No, but that needs to happen. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. Well, I thought that, before we ended, he didn’t have his, when Chris said the names of the people that had sent in letters, I had received more letters than names that he had called, you know, had listed, so I wanted to double check with that list before we left. MR. MAC EWAN-What we need to do is take Cathy’s pile of letters, turn them in to Staff, let them compare with what she’s got and what we’ve received. Letters that she has that the rest of us haven’t gotten, or haven’t been adopted, we’ll make copies and make sure that every member gets a copy of it. MR. SCHACHNER-That’s fine, but that’s the only way they can be considered. MRS. LA BOMBARD-I understand. So, Michael. MR. SHPUNT-Do I have to do something to have that? MRS. LA BOMBARD-No, you don’t. MR. MAC EWAN-We just took care of it. MRS. LA BOMBARD-We just took care of it. Go for it. MR. SHPUNT-Thank you. I live approximately, I’m 977 Bay Road, about right over here, and then there is presently a sand pit, an illegal sand pit right here. A gentleman earlier mentioned it, and there was an approved development supposed to be put in this place here, and the developer went ahead and just removed, I don’t know how much sand. It’s disgusting. There’s a picture out here, that was on the board, and the trees are just falling over it, and that’s where the sand pit’s supposed to be? That’s awful, and this has been about 10 years now just sitting here. Nobody wants it now. Who knows what would happen in this? It sounds like the developer is going to do better than that, but this piece of property, it looks a desert. Has the Board taken a look at what’s back here? Do you have privy to take a look at what damage has been done over here by a previous? MR. MAC EWAN-It’s not part of this application. MR. SHPUNT-Right, but still, it’s so close. How many sand pits can you have in such a, there’s no limit? It’s just unbelievable. While this operation was going on in the other, I can attest to the noise pollution that it does cause, and it seems like on the weekend it’s even, they can get more sand out of there. It was a illegal. We reported it to the Town and they did stop it. The discussion had already occurred. I’m just so upset that we have so many desert like environments in the Queensbury area. We don’t need any more. Thank you. I just wanted to say my peace. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Karen Nichols, Malcolm Nichols? AUDIENCE MEMBER-They left. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. John Dougher? 30 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MR. LAPPER-Mr. Chairman, I’d like to make a statement that might let everyone go home a little early. Rich and I have been talking. Certainly, when we got started, we went to the regulating agencies, in dealing with the Town engineers. We view this, as we’ve said, as a one front end loader operation, and not the magnitude of what everyone’s concerned about, and we do believe that this is legally permittable, ultimately. At the same time, Rich didn’t anticipate the emotional response of all of his neighbors, and he’d like you to table the application now so that he can re-evaluate the project based upon what we’ve heard. We’re not trying to cut off anyone who hasn’t spoken, but it may not be necessary at this point, and let him re-evaluate, and we’ll communicate with the Board in the future. MR. MAC EWAN-How long do you want to table it for? Is he considering withdrawing the application? MR. LAPPER-Yes. MR. MAC EWAN-You need to tell us he’s going to withdraw the application tonight, or I’ll continue the public hearing, because people have a right to be heard. MR. LAPPER-And I was only saying it to make it easier for everybody. MR. MAC EWAN-Well, at this point, while I understand his sentiments and the way he’s starting to feel about things, to ask us to table this tonight, just stopping it in the middle of the review here, I don’t think it’s fair to everybody who showed up here tonight to speak. So, if Rich wants to withdraw the application, re- review his scheme of things, and then re-submit another application, that’s one thing. MR. LAPPER-No, we’re not, at this point, proposing to withdraw. He’d like to re-evaluate. MR. MAC EWAN-Then I’m going to continue with the public hearing. MR. LAPPER-Certainly. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. We have a Jon Dougher. Okay. Frank Riccio. Okay. Joanne Borgos, Butler Pond Road. Steve and Belinda Sundberg. AUDIENCE MEMBER-They left. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. John and Jean Cirino. Okay. Bob Juhre on Sunnyside North. Okay. Janet Payne. Okay. Michael Villa. Mary Ann and John Doty? MARY ANN DOTY MRS. DOTY-I think everything we had to say has already been said. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Thank you. Bonnie and Jack Englert? Dave Gallagher, on Dream Lake? Ray Davis? Bill Morton? Denise Villa? DENISE VILLA MRS. VILLA-I’ll be brief. My name’s Denise Villa. I live on 12 Lakeview Drive. It’s on the corner of Lakeview and Sunnyside. Most of my concerns have been addressed and I think that you’re thinking of them. Two things that I’ve been thinking about are Mr. Schemerhorn’s only talking about using this mining project, grading project, for his Bay Road. Who’s to say this isn’t going to come down Sunnyside all the time? I don’t want dust. I don’t want trucks driving by. I have enough already. I don’t want anymore. Kids play outside. It’s just going to be that much more that we’re going to have to deal with, on top of the noise and my other concern is my wells. How is my well water going to be? I need to know that if he does this my well is going to be okay, my neighbor’s well is going to be okay, and that’s all I have to say. Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. Doris Farrar? AUDIENCE MEMBER-She had to leave. She said she would send you a letter. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. Susan Fisk? AUDIENCE MEMBER-She left. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Bob Welch? Rich Dallek, 833 Bay Road? RICH DALLEK 31 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MR. DALLEK-I live a few houses south of Tee Hill Road on Bay Road. Rich Dallek. All right. Since I’m not close to the proposed site here, the only effect on me is going to be traffic on Bay Road, which I’ve complained about for 16 years, and it’s becoming increasing, every year, more and more and more, and we have an incredible amount of traffic on Bay Road. It’s become almost like the Northway. In addition to the gravel trucks, we’ve got the tourist traffic, the tractor trailers, the school buses, the motorcycles, and I’ve seen cars do 360 degree spins on the slight grade in front of my house there, especially during the winter. Pedestrians have a very miserable time traversing up and down the road there, bicycles. I can’t vote for the project, simply because of the increased traffic, and I did a couple of little calculations here. Based on the revised numbers here, 150,000 cubic feet divided by 18 cubic feet, gives you 8,333 truck loads, and if they want to do it in five years, that’s like four trucks a day. If you want to do it in 2.74 years, that’s 10 trucks a day. If they want to do it in one year, that’s thirty-five trucks a day. If they want to really cut it short, that’s 54 trucks a day for say half a year. I really think that, you know, it’s really not desirable to knock out the scenery for this particular use. I think the sand could be obtained elsewhere, and I vote against it. That’s it. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Betty Monahan? BETTY MONAHAN MRS. MONAHAN-Betty Monahan, Sunnyside Road. Do you have the application for the subdivision, and the layout of the houses that are going to go on that land? MR. MAC EWAN-They’re on the next application. MRS. MONAHAN-You have them now? MR. VOLLARO-We have them with us, Betty. MRS. MONAHAN-Well, what I’m wondering is we haven’t talked much about that, and under SEQRA, you can’t segment it, and they both have got to be considered at the same time, and that’s SEQRA 617-2 in my handbook, which is a 1992 one, it’s on Page 21, Section D. It’s very definite that you cannot segment SEQRA review on the same project, and I also note when we’re looking at Town criteria, at least in the place that the structures are going to go, the topsoil removed where the structures are going to go cannot be removed from the site because it has to stay on the site as topsoil, and also that the rate of surface runoff shall not be increased anymore than it is now, and I saw some things in the minutes from the last meeting that would make me think that perhaps it’s going to be. Going through the minutes, talking about the erosion control by hay bales, dams and sediment control fencing, we have an example of one of Mr. Schermerhorn’s projects right down the road here. If anybody went by that project during the working time of that project, every time we had a large rain storm, because that was not maintained, the silt was running right down the ditches of the road into the little pond there. So I’m a little nervous about his track record. This stormwater basin, I’m wondering about the infiltration rate. Because if that is not a quick infiltration rate, you’re doing what the insurance industry calls creating an attractive nuisance to children. That’s why, for many years, the Town discouraged having these type of ponds. As you all know, when there’s lawsuits today, you go after the person with the deep pockets, and in this case the deep pockets is going to be the Town that approved this. So I’m a little concerned about that. I’m also concerned, when I read these minutes, being a mother, I think it jumped out at me. How many times there were qualifying adverbs in here by the applicant and sometimes his agent. It was mostly, typically, generally, most of, probably, possible, I’m not planning on. That was always a key to me, as a mother, that I’d better get those kids right down to fine, because they just gave themselves a loophole. As far as pines being a screening agent, I’ve lived in pines all my life. They’re a beautiful tree. They’re great to attract lightening, and they’re great to go down in high winds, but they’re lousy as any kind of a buffer zone. I live with them. Believe me, they don’t buffer anything. They don’t buffer sight. They don’t buffer sound. Mr. Schermerhorn says in these minutes that he’ll do no on site burying of stumps or brush. I hope not. As a developer in this Town, he should know that’s not allowed. So that was kind of a wakeup call to me. I would say when you do a traffic study, we of us who live on Sunnyside Road call the Sheriff repeatedly, asking him to put people on that road to catch speeders. It’s highly, the speed limit is not what it’s supposed to be, and I’ll give you an example. I’m coming up Bay, going to turn into Sunnyside, a truck, dump truck, shot across Bay Road in front of me. I don’t really want to tell you the speed I went to trying to catch up with that truck. I slowed down when I was coming to the curb at Sunnyside where I knew there were a lot of children. So this is the kind of truck traffic that we’re dealing with. I might remind you we’re in a drought cycle. So I’m a little concerned about some of the tests being done. I think when you look at the traffic, you have to look at the number of roads and driveways entering that area of Bay where there’s poor sight distance, and I’d invite any of you, particularly in the summertime, to come to the end of that road, Sunnyside, and see how long it takes you to get out onto Bay. When I hear we could hear 3,000 cars per hour, I don’t know how, but I’m not the expert. We talk about the watersheds and the way they’re all interconnected, and people have gone in to some of them, but the connection that Sunnyside gets into this is because there’s an underground inlet into Sunnyside from the Dream Lake Road. So that’s how you, in that whole cycle of water there, you mess up one area and you’re messing them all up. I think we need to look at another way to develop lower Bay without, you know, coming into our area of Town, messing it up, and maybe we need to look at maybe cutting the density down there, putting ponds in 32 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) or something like that, a way to drain the water off that property, but it really doesn’t seem that we should give up our way of life so that that can get the highest density possible down there, and I think, is it going to be the philosophy of this Town to knock down all the hills to develop land that does not have the right development suitability, and as far as noise, because of all the water around there, it isn’t the kind of noise pattern that you’d think of. At night, in one bedroom, I could hear, with the windows open, the traffic on 149. It’s a constant background noise. On the other hand, I don’t hear cars coming in my own driveway. I hear them going in across the road up the hill. Those are the ones I think are coming in my own driveway. My kids come around and bang on my windows to say mom, let me in because I don’t hear them come in the driveway. We talk about the size of this project, and they call this a small project. This might have been a smaller project back in 1988 when this Ordinance was adopted because even in all the years that I was on the Town Board, the size of the trucks that the Town was buying to do their work, all this stuff has changed in those years, the size of the trucks involved, the back up beepers, you know, we’re not even talking about the same kind of conditions, and I think you have to take that into consideration, and you’re going into a very old, established, historical neighborhood. That area is so old that the road in front my house on the old deeds is called the French Mountain Road. Why? Because that’s where it ended up over what at one time was a halfway house and the road, and, you know, talk about how long we’ve lived there, some of you know, I’ve lived there since about 1925, and I believe enough and that this Town should keep some beauty and some rural open space that I own quite a considerable acreage that’s family property, and it’s not up for sale, unless the Town taxes me out of it. I mean, I’m putting my money where my mouth is when I say, let’s keep Queensbury a good place to live. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. Next is James Depressksinia? MR. MAC EWAN-I don’t think he’s here. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. Christies? Are the Christies here, Mary and Ron? MR. MAC EWAN-They’re passing. MRS. LA BOMBARD-They’re passing? Okay. Next is Patty Myhrberg? Pass? Okay. Laura Mitchell? Fred Champagne? FRED CHAMPAGNE MR. CHAMPAGNE-Really, what I have to say probably isn’t really worth saying, in as much as what’s already said, and I admire you, my friend, Rich, and certainly we’ve known one another for a long time, done business with each other on a number of occasions, but for that man to sit here and listen to what he’s listening to tonight, and even consider, re-considering, knowing that if he were to come back with a second application it would have to be considerably different than the first one, even before he could come back. So, Rich, that speaks highly of you. The name is Champagne. If you were to ask me again, I’d tell you the same. I live at 1 Juniper Drive, easterly of the project. That would be in the down wind of the westerly winds. I’ve lived there since 19, I hate to tell you this, since 1956. When Betty talks about the old neighborhood, well, that’s probably the Champagnes, but I do want to verify the statement that was made earlier, and, Chris, I’m going to have to question you on this even further, but I did talk to Bill Remington regarding the six ton limit, and he did advise me that that road is closed. It is posted. It’s the mud season thing. Normally it’s closed for four weeks to six weeks, again, depending on the condition, and it means that only emergency vehicles, they’ll let fuel trucks and they’ll let, you know, other heavy equipment of that nature over that road, but dump trucks are not one of the emergency type. Again, having resided there since the beginning of Christ, I had the opportunity to build four houses during that time, and on the lower side of Sunnyside North, as you get down by the lake where the road starts going north, to dig down there for a full cellar, you do run into some clay, loamy soils, and we’ve had to do some, give special attention to those foundations in order to prevent water seeping in. In fact, we’ve had a problem with one of them to date. So it seems to me that if this were to go ahead, you would want to dig deeper than what a backhoe would reach in order to test those soils beyond the level of the 100 foot grade that he’s used as his standard here, road level, I guess. I can talk about the trees, the hardwoods, you’re going to change, when you remove upwards to 100 hardwood trees out of there, that are not necessarily fully matured, but they’re well along in age, you’re going to change that water level, and I think that’s important that you give that another look. Certainly, as Supervisor of this Town, I’ve been involved in some bad instances, Forest Park is one. Certainly there’s been others where we’ve had retention ponds and had some serious problems, and certainly Betty addressed that, but it is a problem. To take this a step further, relative to the potential soils, you know, you’re moving it from Point A to Point B. Point B has already, the reason that hasn’t developed over the last 100 years, obviously, is because it’s not the most desirable piece of property in the Town of Queensbury, and consequently it’s wet, swampy, but to take anything down there to build homes, and I understand there’s upwards to 250 plus units that’ll be located down there. I could be wrong on that, but that’s street talk, that’s, to me, a rather serious problem in itself. If you’ll notice I’m skipping over quite a bit of this, right? I’ve got to say this, though. We come here tonight, you know, passionately pleading, and my paragraph reads, and I’ve got to read it because I’ll probably tear up. We come here tonight without legal counsel and without engineering review because we believe in the American way. The American dream to own your own home, to live a quiet and peaceful life, without interference by those who choose to destroy this privilege while pursuing economic gain, and I guess, ladies 33 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) and gentlemen, that’s how I perceive this. In summary, I took a look at the Ordinance relative to RR-3 and RR-5, and I’ve got to read this to you, and I know you’ve read it a thousand times, but just for the record, not knowing quite where we’re going to go with this, for our next step, as a neighborhood group, RR-3 and 5, maximum density, rural residential zones are divided into two areas of different densities, RR-3, where one principal building is allowed for every three acres within the zone. RR-5 is where one principal building is allowed for five acres. That’s pretty elementary stuff. The stuff that I want to really get at here this evening, though, is under Item B of the 179-15, states “Purpose The purpose of Rural Residential zones is to enhance the natural open space and the rural character of the Town of Queensbury by limiting development and sparse densities, steep slopes”, we’re making steep slopes, by the way, “wetlands, limiting soils and marginal access to populated areas often characterized such areas warranting such densities”. And then I go to the section on Mining, Excavation, and Minerals, and I’m not going to read this to you because it’s very boring. It was to me while I read through it, but it talks about, you know, the 30%, if the developer wanted to be a real nice guy, he might even want to go to a 10, or a 15, or a 20, rather than the 30, and we talk about the definition here of extracting soils, retention ponds, and we’ve been into that, stockpiling, Betty mentioned that, unidentified buffer of 50 feet. I understand, from the last application, the revised application, I saw two of the properties that adjoin this particular project that had been extended to the 100’s. There was a third property that remained at 50. Has that been included in the 100 foot buffer or does that remain a 50? Can someone answer that, Mr. Green’s property I think I heard him say. Is Mr. Green’s property still at 50 or 100? MR. MAC EWAN-We’re looking right now. We’ll get an answer to you. MR. CHAMPAGNE-Okay. Well, while you’re doing that, you know, it goes on to talk about the natural boundaries, alignments and the water courses. It talks about maintaining the topography to the extent that we can, rather than a hill at its peak and you start at the peak of the hill and you start chopping into there so that you have this 30 degree slope, if you will, with the Mitchells and my grandchildren and the Huber’s grandchildren living, playing in close proximity to that particular project. One hundred feet is not an awful lot of area between property lines, to be very honest with you. MR. VOLLARO-Fred, the distance is 50 feet to the Greens, according to my map. MR. CHAMPAGNE-That’s what I understood, too. Okay, and I also have to say this, you know, my final words are that this proposed mining operation, it’s not a matter of need. It really isn’t, but rather it’s a matter of greed, and I ask you not to approve this. Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Barbara Champagne? Maureen Monahan-Chase? AUDIENCE MEMBER-No. She went home. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Okay. Joan Flannagan? JOAN FLANNAGAN MRS. FLANNAGAN-Pass. MRS. LA BOMBARD-James Barcas? Christian Finkowski? Karen Culver? KAREN CULVER MRS. CULVER-My name is Karen Culver. I live at 124 Sunnyside North, and there’s only one additional thing that no one has mentioned, about, well, last year a majority of the people in this room spent over a year trying to maintain or improve the quality of Lake Sunnyside, and we all put in a lot of hard work and money and in fact the Town contributed $5,000 to that project, and as I see it, this proposed project jeopardizes the quality of the water, and I know Mr. Schermerhorn has good intentions of maintaining the vegetation, but you can’t really control that. All the pits that are left, the reason there’s nothing growing there is all the nutrients have been removed. That’s all I have to say. Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you very much. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Betty Lewis? Melody Dutcher? Ed Hooker, on Ridge Road? Okay. The Christie’s, Ronnie and Mary? We have some doubles. Okay. Ross Auburn? ROSS AUBURN MR. AUBURN-My name’s Ross Auburn. I live at 992 Bay Road. I moved out here a little over a year ago. I lived at the bottom of Moon Hill Road for a year. I rented a house. I just bought a house. It’s right here. That’s where 992 Bay Road is, right next to the cornfield. I bought the house in the beginning of September. In October I found out about the proposal. That was a bummer. Also you were asking about the school bus stops. The first one’s going to be in front of my house, and then the next one’s going to be down a little bit. 34 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) The trucks should be able to see the school buses just fine because they’ll be coming from a dead stop at the corner of Moon Hill. My primary concern, my personal primary concern, is the property value, being I just bought the house and now this is going on. Amongst that, noise pollution is a big concern of mine. From the corner of Moon Hill, the trucks will come and make a right, go south on Bay Road. They’ll be accelerating right there. I don’t know how fast they’ll be going in front of my house, but it won’t be like a vehicle that’s doing 45 and cruising down the road. They’ll be shifting through the gears, accelerating, and they’ll just be louder. On the return trip, jake brake brakes. It’s 400 feet, 500 feet to the corner. It’s going to be loud. I’d do better if I could read my own notes, but, you know, this kind of stuff gets us all pretty riled up. I do understand that, currently, the Town Board is changing the Ordinance within the RR-3 zone which prevents this type of mining. Is that correct? MR. MAC EWAN-It’s one of the things I think being considered, yes. I don’t know exactly to what extent that portion of the Zoning Ordinance is going to be revised, if and when it’s adopted. MR. AUBURN-Okay. Because I checked into it to a degree, and what I heard is that it sounds like it’s going to happen. MR. MAC EWAN-But the issue is that we have with this application, if I think I know where you’re going with this, is that this would be grandfathered because it’s already been submitted prior to the new Zoning Ordinance being adopted. MR. AUBURN-I understand that, and my point is that had the project come along right now, had the project come along in a month from now, it might not be allowed at all because the Ordinance has been changed, and where I’m going with that is what is the reason for changing the Ordinance? The reason for changing the Ordinance is to prevent this type of a thing. Why? Some group of people feel that it’s not a good thing to have, so that’s why they’re going to change the Ordinance within the zone. That’s where I was going with that. I’ve never met Mr. Schermerhorn before. I believe, from what I’ve seen tonight, I think he’s been very straightforward and honest with us. I don’t have a problem with it, but I do think this is going to lower the property value of my house. Maybe in five years from now, it won’t be a problem, you know, but what’s going to be the case in three years? Why should I have to suffer with the possibility of that happening so that someone else can make money? It just doesn’t seem right to me. On the environmental factor of it, there’s all kinds of talk. The bottom line is, we don’t know. Do you know what’s going to happen if we take the land out of there? Do we really know what’s going to happen? We think we know what’s going to happen, but you won’t know until it’s done. You might not know the consequences for 10 or 15 years. It might not be a problem, but if it is a problem, it’s not going to be one that can be reversed. It’s not going to be able to be put back. So without getting into all the individual factors of it, you know, that’s one thing to think about. Nature took a long time to put that there, and it was put there for a reason, and, you know, maybe it wouldn’t be a problem, maybe it would, but if it is a problem, it’s probably not going to be one that’s going to be reversible. The only other thing I’d like to say is there’s a lot of people here that don’t want this. I don’t see any here that do want it, and they were allowed to come also. The people who, you know, want to come up here and say, hey, I think it’s a good idea, I think you should let it pass, they were also allowed to walk through that door, but, you know, they’re not here. It’s a whole bunch of people. The majority says this is no good. So, you know, all I ask, and I’m done, when you make your decision, make it based upon the greatest good for the greatest number of people involved, pro survival for everybody. That sand could come from somewhere else. Take some of these smaller pits that Catherine was mentioning and maybe, you know, do something with them. Maybe get 50,000 cubic yards out of one and put a couple of houses in there so that they’re not eyesores. Maybe he could do that in four different places so that he could get his sand locally. I don’t know. All I know is that I don’t feel like I should have to live with the noise and the trucks for five years or for three years, and what is the noise going to be? Do we know that either? How loud is the exhaust from a bulldozer? Is it 600 feet or is it, you know, 2,700 feet? What is it? How loud is it going to be at my house? I can’t sit here and tell you I’m going to hear it at my house and it’s no good, but, on the other hand, there’s a good likelihood I will and I’ll just have to live with it for five years, or three years, or whatever, and I just don’t think that’s right. I think it’s wrong, and everybody’s tired. I’m gone, but just one last thing, as you know, if something’s not right, it’s wrong. So I hope you guys do the right thing. Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Don Villa? Marcy Ballard? MARCY BALLARD MRS. BALLARD-My name is Marcy Ballard. I live on Howard Drive, which is off of Rockwell Road. That runs parallel between Bay Road and Ridge Road, and I just wanted to say that I can hear the truck traffic on Ridge Road all year long, even in the summertime with the buffer and all the trees, and I can’t imagine what the people that live even closer to this project are going to be hearing, and I’ve been living in this area my entire life, and I saw Gary Bowen cover the most beautiful growing land with golf course, and then have the senior citizen home being built and houses in that area. If you take a look at that picture there, you can actually see the ridges that were created by the last glacier that covered this area, and if you had a larger aerial view, you could actually see all the ridges that run parallel this way, and, you know, that’s a beautiful structure that we have in this area. Why let somebody come here and destroy that and take it for fill, fill in an area that’s wetland, and, you know, when that fill can be taken from somewhere else. So I’m just asking you 35 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) please, you know, keep the beauty of this Town here, and for us to be able to enjoy and look at it. That’s why we live here for this. Thank you. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Sandy Lorensen? SANDY LORENSEN MRS. LORENSEN-My name is Sandy Lorensen. I live on the corner of Bay and Moon Hill, and my concern is at the bus stop, which one of you gentlemen had mentioned, my children do get on the bus stop on the corner of Bay and Moon Hill, four of them, every morning, and also the increased traffic on the road, especially when they were diverting it for 149 did cause some damage to the road, which the County has repaired, but I do see over the winter, this winter, that it is again breaking apart there, and what would the increased truck traffic? The other thing that comes as a concern is the number of accidents on the corner, and being a first responder to many of them, I’ve seen quite a bit of damage to people there. Their lives have changed, and what’s the value of a human life? And I really would like you to think about these things, not only the kids’ safety, the road, but also would an increase in traffic in that area cause more accidents and more casualties, and who will be the next? Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-You’re welcome. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Jason Vilander? John Walker? MR. MAC EWAN-He left. MRS. LA BOMBARD-Now I’ve got through all the names. Is there anybody that I haven’t, that I’ve missed, or anybody that would like to say anything? NANCY NEWBURN MRS. NEWBURN-My name’s Nancy Newburn, and I live at 40 Sunnyside North, and I’m just a little blown away by the fact that there’s already a proposal, it sounds like, in case this one doesn’t go through, to develop that land, and I hope that’s not the case. Because if something does come on the table again, I will be here again, because I live right around the corner, and that’s a beautiful piece of land. A home of natural beauty, a good place to live, so says the stationary of the very Town that threatens to allow the destruction of another piece of this beautiful place by approving this proposal in my neighborhood. I’ve lived in Queensbury all my life, and I’ve lived, I was thinking about it, on Lake Sunnyside for nine years, but this Town does not remotely resemble the beautiful place I remember as a child. That’s why I chose to live in rural Queensbury, but the character of even this rural neighborhood is in danger. Please don’t allow the degradation of this neighborhood to happen. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever. In weighing this important decision, please consider the negative impact this mine will have on our environment. The loss of that habitat for native flora and fauna that thrives there is unacceptable. This land will not recover, not in my lifetime, probably not in my kids’ lifetime. It just won’t happen. Consider the wildlife that depends on that beautiful place. Wildlife that will just disappear from this area. That’s too important to lose. It just is. Forever is a long time. Please consider aesthetics. This neighborhood has already lost enough of its character and natural beauty. Enough really is enough, and consider this. My daughter and I suffer from asthma. Thermal inversion already impacts our home when we open our homes, having, you know, wanting to let the fresh air in, and in the morning, the house is full of exhaust fumes. Thermal inversion, in case anybody doesn’t know, is when cold air sinks, and it traps pollutants that would otherwise dissipate into the atmosphere. Please don’t add to the pollution that already exists in our neighborhood. Please. The exhaust and dust pollution in this neighborhood is already excessive. That daughter that I mentioned, who would be here tonight if she wasn’t working, only recently got her license, and I literally beg you not to add to the hazards that she already faces by the growing congestion of traffic in Queensbury. Please. This is my daughter. I mentioned the beauty of my neighborhood. Let me include in that beauty the quiet and serenity that we enjoy, all of us. Please don’t shatter that peace. I could go on and on about this crucial issue, about the inevitable damage to groundwater that this project will cause, and the property values that will certainly plunge and about the fact that this project is completely unnecessary, but I’d also like to impart to you, the folks who are here to look out for us, for our best interests, the best interests of all the neighborhoods in Queensbury, I’d ask you this, or I’d like to tell you that, it may sound corny, but it would break my heart if this happened, if this project went forward, and I dare say it would break my daughter’s heart, too, because she’s already seen the change in her town. She plans to stay in this area, and I don’t want her to be driven to another more beautiful rural setting, because this is already beautiful, and, please, each of you consider how you would feel if this was in your back yard. Our precious neighborhood is so important. Please just say a resounding no to the exploitation of this important and irreplaceable bit of beauty. Thank you for hearing my voice, and I implore that you listen to my voice, and to everybody’s voice here. Thank you. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. Anyone else? Good evening. TOM KUBRICKY 36 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MR. KUBRICKY-Yes. How are you doing? MR. MAC EWAN-For the record, you are? MR. KUBRICKY-Yes, Tom Kubricky. I just, I sort of got everybody’s feelings tonight, and I sort of walked in late, so I didn’t really understand everything coming in, but I sort of wanted to commend Rich on what he’s done, and stuff like that. I heard everybody’s feelings on it, and I can feel your concern is their concern as well, and I think before the Board or anybody, I think the Town of Queensbury, if they’re not going to let Rich do something like this, even though it’s zoned to do that, I think maybe what the Town of Queensbury should do is say, okay, we don’t want you to tear the mountain out so we’ll let you have fill out of our Queensbury pit over on Ridge Road or something like that. I’d like to see the Town of Queensbury keep a guy like Rich Schermerhorn here, continue building and bringing people into our community, giving them places to stay where they relocate before they choose to buy a house here, because I feel he’s really accommodating a lot of people that come to live in the Town of Queensbury. That’s all I have to say. MR. MAC EWAN-Thank you. Anyone else? No takers? Okay. Well, I think for the time being, I’m going to leave the public hearing open. MR. SCHERMERHORN-Well, it’s obvious, I know the way everybody feels about the project. I guess I just want to say that I’m not a greedy person. I’m not a person that doesn’t have feelings, and I do want to thank just about the majority of this room, and I do want to thank Planning Staff. Planning Staff has been very good to me in the past, but I’ve also, I’ve done what’s been asked of me, but there are those few in the crowd that surprised me most, that I was supporters of, and I won’t go into names, but to use words like shaky reputation and for greed, I kind of took that personally, but I do want to thank the people in this crowd. They were very professional. I understand their feelings, and to the Board and the public, I am going to definitely re-think this proposed application, and I would like to ask if we could table it for possibly 60 days. I am going to come back with possibly something entirely different, but I would ask if we could table this and go from there. MR. MAC EWAN-Is your intention to submit new material? MR. SCHERMERHORN-Yes, definitely, if I decide to go forward. I have taken everybody’s comments seriously, and I will say that I believe that the majority would be satisfied if I did come back with a new proposal. MR. MAC EWAN-But you’re kind of leaving it open-ended. Can we table this thing for 60 days? MR. SCHACHNER-Sure. You’re not obligated to, but you certainly can. MR. MAC EWAN-If we table it for 60 days, then I would ask that you cover the expenses of re-advertising this, so that the public will be well noticed for the next meeting? MR. SCHERMERHORN-That would be fine. MR. SANFORD-Craig, can we take a vote on that? I don’t want to table it. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m getting a sense from fellow Board members that they want to just move forward with this. MR. LAPPER-I guess what Rich is saying is that he wants to consider whether he wants to pursue the project and if he does want to pursue the project, it would be substantially different, with a modification. MR. MAC EWAN-Well, then I would ask you to, at this point, if that’s where you think you’re going with this thing, I’d ask you to withdraw this application and submit a brand new one with a whole new scheme of things, so we’re not getting this application skewed with a new one that’s coming down the pike. I think that would be the wisest thing to do. MR. LAPPER-I don’t recall when somebody asked the Planning Board to table that that was not accepted at any time in the past. MR. MAC EWAN-I’m not saying we’re not accepting it. I’m just trying to give you a, I think, a better procedure to follow. I’m not comfortable. MR. LAPPER-I don’t know what Rich is going to decide. So I’d just like to keep his options open, because if he comes back with something substantially smaller, he’s done a lot of work to get to this point, addressed a lot of issues, met with a lot of agencies. It would just be simpler to, maybe not start over again. 37 (Queensbury Planning Board Meeting 3/21/02) MR. MAC EWAN-Well, for all practical purposes, that’s kind of the indication you’re giving us that that’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to scale this thing back or come up with an alternate plan that’s not the same as what we’re dealing with here tonight. MR. SCHERMERHORN-All right. I guess what I’m getting at is, the thought that I have is I certainly have no problem withdrawing the mining proposal, but now how is the public going to feel if I come back and I ask for a two lot subdivision? I mean, there’s going to have to be a slight grading plan, and slight could be six feet or ten feet, on the top of the ridge, somehow, and the reason I say I want to think about it is I’ve got to be sure that I can get two feasible driveways or maybe three, if I can do three houses, but if I come back with a proposal for three houses, and I try and preserve what’s there, but I mean if the indication is, if people just simply do not want anything built, if that’s not the case, I’m more than happy to come back. MR. MAC EWAN-The short answer that I could give you, that we tell just about anybody who has an application in front of us, that’s a chance you take. I can’t gauge, this Board can’t gauge what the public opinion is going to be. We can’t gauge what our perception is going to be without looking at plans, reviewing documentation, reviewing the technical aspects. That’s a gamble that anybody takes that walks through the door and submits an application for site plan in this Town. So, I mean, you guys, I don’t have the warm and fuzzies about wanting to table this for 60 days. MR. LAPPER-If you don’t want to table it, what do you want to do? Do you want to do a SEQRA determination? MR. MAC EWAN-The next thing we’ll probably do is a SEQRA, yes. MR. SCHERMERHORN-I’ll withdraw the application, because like I said, you know. MR. MAC EWAN-I think you did a good thing, Rich. AUDIENCE MEMBERS-Thank you, Rich. MR. SCHERMERHORN-You’re welcome. MR. MAC EWAN-That’s it. Thank you. On motion meeting was adjourned. RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED, Craig MacEwan, Chairman 38