Carmans River Watershed '10 to '12

The 4/29/12 updates are highlighted like this sentence.

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The Carmans River flows from Bellport Bay northward through Yaphank to Middle Island. It is bounded by marshes, farmland, developed areas and undeveloped areas. It is dammed in 3 places, forming lakes. Within its Watershed, major projects are being planned. Although suffering from pollution, it is one of the cleanest of Long Island's nearby rivers and creeks.

Study Group's First Try at a Plan.

In October 2010, a specially appointed Study Group started looking at how to save the Carmans River from the fate of the Forge River. The appointees were representatives of associations of builders and developers and of major environmental groups. It was assisted by the Town's Planning and Environmental Divisions. Civic organizations were allowed to speak at some of the group's meetings but were at times not allowed even to be present; civics had no right to vote. Supervisor Lesko directed that the work be completed in 90 days.

It took longer, but the Study Group voted to approve a plan with 2 principal elements. First, it recommended steps to reduce impacts on the river by upzoning, acquiring land, enlarging the Core of the Central Pine Barrens within the Watershed, and limiting discharges that would reach the river. Second, it recommended moving residential density from parts of the Watershed to certain J Business and L-1 Industrial zones in the rest of Town and increasing the number of living units to be allowed in the Town by allowing multifamily units of 3.5 to 9 units per acre in the designated J and L-1 zones. The density multipliers were to permit greater compensation for lands acquired and, it has been reported, to get the votes of the developer representatives. Density transfer was to be achieved using Transfer of Development Rights (TDR's), including Pine Barrens TDR's.

The Town Planning Department has posted some background and information on the Study Group proceedings and some resources here, and has updated this page.

The Study Group's recommendations were presented to the Town Board in a Draft Carmans River Watershed Management and Protection Plan (a searchable, bookmarked version of the Recommendations chapter is here). The Town Board accepted the draft on 3/29/11. It also adopted a "Positive Declaration" under SEQRA that required preparation of a Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement. At its meeting that date, it heard members of the Study Group and others speak in support of the Draft Plan and many residents raise problems with it. The Town Board also allowed written comments on the Draft Plan to be submitted through April 28.

Responses to the First Proposal.

In its Pos Dec, the Town Board had found that "the receipt of transfer of development could alter the community character in receiving areas and needs to be considered". This finding presaged the major problem found in the Study Group's first proposal.

The Town received numerous written comments on the proposal. EMPOA submitted letters commenting on the Draft Plan dated March 29 and April 28. These letters emphasized certain general problems with the Draft Plan and the absence of supporting data or analysis, and urged the Town Board to stop work on the draft GEIS, furnish data and analysis needed to assess the plan, and receive additional comments based on the data and analysis so the Draft Plan could be changed as indicated by the information and comments.

The most serious objections for the proposals viability were directed at the proposed receiving areas. Their designation was a best vague--any J2 or L1 parcels that could score well enough on a complicated score card that attempted to assign values to parcel's characteristics that were deemed to make them suitable for Multi-family housing at multiplied densities.

State Legislation

For the proposal to be implemented by expanding the Pine Barrens Core, the New York State Legislature had to act. It approved an expansion on 6/17/11, but for it to be effective, the Town Board and the Pine Barrens Commission had to approve a plan according to a certain schedule. It required that "within six months of the effective date of this section, the town of Brookhaven shall finalize the Carmans River watershed protection and management plan, and the commission shall approve such finalized plan".

Although passed in June, the bill was not sent to the Governor for signature until 9/12/11 and was signed on 9/23/11. The Town Board therefore had to finalize the plan by 3/23/11.

Period Between Plans

The Study Group went back to work during the second half of 2011. Meanwhile, on the public stage members of the Study group and others publicized their views pro and con on the proposal.

EMPOA submitted FOIL requests on 8/4/11 for detailed information that should have underlay the comprehensive plan that had been proposed; what was requested is listed here. Nothing was provided until early November, when only a small part of what was requested was made available; it can be viewed here in the folder "'11-11-03 Docs from Town Pursuant to FOIL Request". Assuming that the Town's response was straightforward and it was not conniving to withhold data, the paucity of concrete information supporting the Study Group's proposal is quite revealing.

A New Proposal

By November 2011, word was flying that there was a new proposal to be made that involved a different approach to TDR receiving areas. Specific sites within each council district were being discussed privately with each council member.

On 12/7/11, a meeting of the Carmans River Partnership was held at which Town officials revealed the broad terms of the new proposal. Specific receiving sites was indeed the plan, but the list of sites was still being worked on. It was not until the Town Board's 3/2/12 work session that a general presentation was made of the new proposal. Astonishingly, the Supervisor submitted a resolution that the new plan be accepted at the 3/6/12 Town Board meeting and that a public hearing be scheduled on it.

The receiving sites proposed by the Supervisor were in a constant state of change. The 2/29/12 version of the list can be seen as a Google map here. It shows, for example, receiving sites in Council District 6 and others that would soon disappear.

Town Board Meeting 3/6/12

On 3/6/12, the Town Board listened in a packed auditorium to testimony on the proposed revised plan. Several members of the Study Group who had been working with the Supervisor testified in favor of it. Then 18 residents testified, objecting to accepting the plan as proposed or to parts of it, while other residents were waving signs opposing the proposal. The bulk of the objections were to the selection of "receiving" sites for the transfer of development rights ("TDR's") to be issued under the plan for building Multi-Family ("MF") housing throughout the Town.

As the testimony was being heard, numerous private conferences took take place among the Supervisor and individual councilpersons on the dais--and evidently in the room behind it.

Prior to the meeting, the Supervisor had apparently agreed to remove receiving sites in CD2 and CD 6 from the list, along with a particularly controversial site in CD1. During the meeting he offered to the residents present from CD1 to remove all receiving sites from that district. He never explained how he could remove CD 1 sites without replacing them with sites in other districts.

Finally, although there were many more residents who had signed up to testify, the Supervisor announced that it was clear to him from comments and Board members that the plan would not be accepted Tuesday night. He moved to table his resolution for 2 weeks--cutting off the remaining residents who had wanted to speak.

Councilman Panico spoke out against accepting the plan and emphasized the need to be straightforward in saying that it includes a tax increase of around $39 million.

Councilman Fiore-Rosenfeld said he cares for the environment but did not want to sacrifice the rest of the Town by turning it into Brooklyn. He said that the process had been fraught with missteps up to this point, and that he had serious substantive issues with the plan. Dialog with communities was needed, he said.

Councilmen Panico and Fiore-Rosenfeld both pointed out that tabling for 2 weeks was not enough time for working on the plan; they voted against the motion to table. The rest of the Board voted for it.

The members of the Town Council reportedly did not receive complete copies of the Supervisor's proposed plan and the supporting Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement until just before the 3/6/12 meeting. Copies were not available to the public prior to the meeting. EMPOA submitted a FOIL request for them, received them on 3/23/12, and posted both the proposed Plan and the DGEIS on its website. Only after that were they posted on the Town's website, where they may also be viewed.

Resources

The Carmans River DGEIS that EMPOA obtained contained a list of Resources on which it was based in its Section 7. EMPOA has used FOIL to obtain electronic copies of many of these resources; they are important in understanding issues that pertain to the watershed and its environmental problems. Some of the resources are already available on internet. To see where some Resources many be viewed on the internet and see others that EMPOA received electronic copies of, click here

Town Board Meeting 3/29/12

The 3/29 Town Board meeting was in many ways a repeat of the 3/6 meeting. The Supervisor sat through a long list of residents speaking against his proposal.

Councilman Fiore-Rosenfeld had a different approach. He, together with Councilman Panico and Councilwoman Kepert, offered an amendment to the Supervisor's resolution; it effectively gutted it. They proposed decoupling the watershed plan from the proposed multi-family and Pine Barrens Core expansion proposals, and moving forward separately with each of the three subjects. They would start by getting public input into on what was needed and what was wanted.

Counting the votes on the Board, the Supervisor withdrew his resolution.

Town Board Meeting 4/24/12

By its 4/24/12 meeting, the Town Board's division had disappeared--at least on the surface. After more than an hour of public comments mostly supporting the alternative resolution sponsored by Councilmembers Fiore-Rosenfeld, Panico and Kepert, the Board unanimously passed it. The resolution presents the following goals:

"First, further preserve and protect the Carmans River.

Secondly, responsibly create and locate reasonably priced next generation housing; and

finally, preserve the integrity of the NYS Long Island Pine Barrens Protection Act of 1993"

The goals are to be decoupled and addressed separately according to the resolution.

Meetings to receive public input are scheduled for Wednesday, 5/30/12 at 6 pm and Saturday, 6/2/12 at 1 pm at Town Hall. The resolution states that, in addition, councilmembers may hold meetings for public input within their districts. Councilman Panico has stated that he will hold one or more meetings.