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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2020-10-27 10/27/2020 Conservation Board 10/27/2020 Members Present: Gian Dodici (Chair), Bob Beck, Anne Clark, David Wilson, Peter Davies, Jeanne Grace, Nancy Munkenbeck, Craig Schutt, Tim Woods Absent: Liaisons: David Weinstein (Planning Board), Simon St. Laurent (Planning Board) Guest(s): David Waterman The meeting was called to order at 7:03 PM. Review and approval of minutes dated September 29th, 2020 On motion made by C. Schutt, seconded by B. Beck, minutes were unanimously approved as written. Ag Committee update: The Ag Committee supported the Conservation Board, and the Planning Boards resolution regarding the 2150 Dryden Road Solar Project. Planning Board update: The Planning Board joined the general frustration with NYSEG and True Green. It seems like the town has come to agreement with NYSEG that no one really loves but the only thing we can probably get. The Town Board cannot make NYSEG put these interconnections underground in ways that they would like. So now they’re trying to make it less awful while still being above ground. Apparently, NYSEG does not even have the training or equipment for this kind of project. They moved two poles a couple feet. That was the only change in the design. NYSEG agreed to do less cutting, but that’s just less work on their part. The Town Board completely ignored their advisory committees again. They had their resolution all ready when they met and just passed it. There was some discussion for the future of possibly making approvals come in steps, so the boards don’t have surprises like this. How we got here and what we can do in the future are still ongoing. The Planning Board also talked about the survey results which are on the Dryden2045.org site where you can also find summaries of the responses. Rail Trail update: Bob Beck said that he just received the first bridge orientation design information on price estimates for four or five different orientations of the bridge across Route 13. The Rail Trail has a Zoom meeting scheduled for the 12th with the subcommittee dealing with the tap grant and with Erdmann Anthony engineers in Rochester. They will take a look at alternate options for the orientation and angle of the 10/27/2020 bridge going across the road. The board is beginning to get important information to look at along with the cost. We are thinking that if it were more perpendicular it would be a shorter bridge, which would save money. If it were perpendicular, it would require potentially different land on the east side which gets more complicated. It also makes the ramps on each side more complicated. Less money for the bridge doesn’t mean less money for the whole project. They do not have adequate easements for the two properties just east of the bridge. They are looking into it. It was decided that the grants subcommittee will be meeting twice a month for the foreseeable future. Deer Management update: Tim Woods- Jason Cuykendall who lives in Freeville, sent out a request for people to make comments on deer damage in the village and what they thought would be appropriate to control that. He was already familiar with what happened in Lansing Village. He has a friend who is a wildlife biologist, Eric Toftgaard, who is moving to Freeville soon. And Eric was a part of the Lansing operation and knew professor Blossey and Joey Guernsey. We are meeting with the Freeville trustees next week to brief them on how this works and to show them where we have tried to site some co hunts within the village boundaries. I have been out and walked some sites that have been recommended and I thought they all looked good. I have to get Joey to do the same thing because he’s the one who will make the ultimate decision. 2150 Dryden Road update: Comments • The Town Board paid no attention to what we asked for and recommended. We still have not gotten access to the south side. • They had two pictures the night of the Town Board meeting, but it didn’t show the extent of the trees they need to take down. • Cutting in an area like that, trees more than 12 inches or diameter at chest high have to be listed out. • As far as I know, no one has seen a list yet. • The Planning Department should be the one to enforce this. David Weinstein- Obviously, all the boards wanted the lines to go underground to the NYSEG connection. What was presented from NYSEG shows there was no way they would do that. The choice was to abandon the project or swallow the fact that these will be above ground poles. When we walked the site, we said that we want to make sure ag equipment can get through this area with above ground poles. Either have ag equipment have a 40 foot opening passing under one wire that is 35 feet in the air or if we move the whole assembly to the east corner, any ag equipment would have to drive under three wires but those wires would only be 20 feet off the ground because they are a lower voltage. It would be more problematic to move the assembly. It’s tragic that the original developer said they could put it underground without checking with NYSEG first. All I’m trying to say is the Town Board was stuck between a rock and a hard place. They didn’t blatantly ignore everything they heard; they were faced with these dilemmas of what the best thing would be for this project. There’s a group of 18 poles in this assembly, half are owned by NYSEG and half are owned by True Green. NYSEG was willing to have the interconnection at George Road but it would be much more 10/27/2020 visually intrusive because it would require more poles. In their point of view, it would make sense to have the interconnection in the field which they believed would be much less visually intrusive. This is a flood plain too. If it got wet, it could shut down a whole portion of the grid. The Town could keep having smaller solar farms below ground as long as they didn’t exceed this threshold that requires the piece of equipment, they won’t put underground. C Schutt- NYSEG straight up lied to us about the solar farm at Cornell near the dairy barn. Someone asked about that one and they said oh that National Grid’s. Well, all you need to do is drive down there and look at the substation that it’s hooked up to. It says NYSEG right on it. They can do it underground, but now they don’t want to. B Beck pointed out that on the site plan, it shows the Rail Trial is closer within the same parcel of land which is not accurate. The Rail Trail is at the top and is further away beyond more trees. It’s on the William George Agency parcel. It falls around the outside of the parcel that has the solar farm on it. In my view, the positioning of the pole array down below wouldn’t make any difference in terms of the visual impact from the Rail Trial. If they moved the poles to the north, which is what the Conservation Board recommended, there would be a straight visual sighting of the pole arrays from George Road. The one that was decided upon, there would be an angle cut through the vegetation near the road and from the road looking down, you would not see the poles. It was less of a visual impact from the road, assuming the trees and shrubbery can grow up taller. The fact that they didn’t move the array to the north didn’t bother him. The problem here is with NYSEG. He says they can’t force them to put it underground, so they’re stuck with it. There’s an opportunity here for the Town Board to pass a law that says from here on out, solar projects would be only underground. Just because NYSEG doesn’t do underground connections now, doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. Comprehensive Plan Survey Update: S St Laurent- Depending on who you talk to, we got less input or more input than we expected. We got less input than we got in the original survey for the 2005 Comprehensive Plan. I think people were also more apt to check their mail instead of throwing it out. We’re really early in figuring out what it all means, we tested things from the previous Comp Plan to see what people would find. I want to encourage you all to take a look at the results and form your own opinion before we discuss it. We’re talking about having a more public outreach, but it probably won’t be an in person meeting. We will let you know how that develops. We got around 740 surveys back which is about 10% response per household. Last time we mailed these out we got about a 35% return. Judge for yourselves, but there is strong support for open space and maintaining natural areas, as there was in 2005. Especially this year, the only thing there is to do is be outdoors. Any public space is needed. Dryden Lake Dam: This was built as an ice pond and for the mill that was near the original dam. The state owns the structure and said it failed the recent dam safety inspection. If the dam isn’t up to safety standards it has to be rebuilt, repaired or removed. The state has to decide what they are going to do. There’s no longer a mill or icehouse there, but this is where people go to do activities. This is also a nesting area for Eagles now. The dam raised the level of the lake and made it bigger. Roger Beck built the current dam in 1974. They talked to him and told him about the current issues there. Bob Beck told Jason Leifer (Town 10/27/2020 Supervisor) this in hopes that he will get in contact with him. Roger says that he is surprised that it is deteriorated. It’s got 16-inch pressure treated crisscross timber and it has an interior of big boulders that aren’t about to wash out anytime soon. Roger says it can be repaired and he doesn’t think it needs be replaced. Bob think DEC tends to want to remove all dams because they don’t like them. They don’t like to maintain dams or structures of that nature. Bob thinks in most of views here, DEC should pay for any repairs, not the town. They offered to turn over the ownership of the lake to the town, but they don’t want to own it. The original dam was built in 1801. In the 70’s it was rebuilt because it was in bad shape. During that time, the state came along and wanted to buy it from the private owners, so they sold it and the state hired Roger Beck and others to fix it. The state purchased the dam because the state was really interested in the wildlife associated with the open waters and the wetlands, along with recreation of course. The town made arrangements with the state to maintain the park on DEC property. Where the park is now, was a cow pasture up until the original owners sold the lake and land off to the state. This Board should urge the Town Board to request the DEC maintain the lake and dam. G Dodici- I have a slightly different take on this situation. These dams aren’t natural so of course they require maintenance and upkeep. I apologize if earlier I said the option was to replace it, it just has to be brought up to safety standards. Dams aren’t part of the natural system. People get used to it, but it doesn’t mean it should be there. I don’t think it should be up to the state to pay for. I believe the town should take ownership and pay for the dam if it means that much to the town. The state especially now, is going to be tight on money so they’re not necessarily going to have the money to repair it. If the town feels that strongly about keeping it, the town should step up and pay for it. There’s no question that there would be short term impacts. It would be about 30% cheaper to take out a dam vs repairing it. With the removal you only have to do it once, repairing it would be a long-term cost. I would be in favor of removing the dam. A few years ago, there was a small lake over in Spencer and the same issue came up with that and a few weeks ago they took it out. It was privately owned, and the landowner didn’t have the money to repair it. There was a wetland up stream that wasn’t affected by it. Natural agencies have moved away from impounding flowing streams to create different habits. I realize this has been here for a long time but if you remove the dam the kettle lake will still be there, just three feet shallower. You’ll just have a different kind of habitat. Obviously, things have been established but that doesn’t mean taking it out will result in something negative. A Clark- I’m all for natural systems, something that has been here for two hundred years has a lot of stuff around it that depend on it. I think we should look at it in the larger natural history context as well. The state tried giving it to the town, but the town didn’t want it. There’s a lot of people around that go to visit this area. Ice fishers, kayakers, hikers, etc. removing the dam would have a major impact on the wetlands upstream, including Cornell, and the Dryden Lake park. D Waterman- If you look at a contour map of Dryden Lake, it shows the size of the lake would substantially shrink if we were to get rid of this dam. Most of it would become a mud pit. The deepest place right now is twelve feet. It would only be nine feet deep if the dam were to get removed. The view from the park and the Jim Schug Trial, would be gone. A Clark- The lake is important for the Jim Shug Section of the Rail Trail users. It’s also an important piece of Dryden that I would not like to see lost. It has become a rather important water bird stop over area. The Jim Schug trail would turn into mud. The first step would be to see why the dam didn’t pass. Maybe 10/27/2020 it’s an easy fix. It may be something relatively simple. I think we should be willing to do what we can to get DEC to fix it. If not, I think the town should repair the dam. J Grace: I would be leaning more towards Gian’s opinion, but I need to know a lot more before making a decision including the cost of removing and the defect in it. A Clark: I don’t think you should ignore the hidden cost, once you take a dam out, you need to deal with other areas. Bob and Craig will gather some information for next meeting. Recreational Trust Fund: This idea is very much in the beginning stages, it came out seeing a lot of developments getting proposed that weren’t providing the amount of recreation that is nationally suggested. Anywhere from having 1000 square feet per unit to even more than that. If we’re going to allow these developments to go in and not provide recreations, can we extract a fee from them to put into a kitty to be used to buy more recreational land. There are other towns that do this so we’re looking into that. People who are moving into these places are going to be looking for recreational land. We’re not requiring them to put in what these standards should suggest. This is just a thought to put into the Conservation Boards brain. The zoning law that would require a certain type of development would have this fee associated with it somehow. So, our role would be to issue a resolution to the Town Board to recommend if this is what we want to do. We’ll try to get more information to present next meeting. Other Business: B Beck- The new hires at the Town Hall have been very helpful and are willing to work with our Rail Trail, especially grants, in terms of managing the financial information which gets pretty complicated. The town expenditures from various departments, the grant income and the volunteer donations of times and materials, all of that has to be for the grants, maintained in an organized fashion separately from other town records so it is available for audits. Up until now it just hadn’t been done. This all becomes important when we need to request reimbursements. Amanda Anderson, Bookkeeper; Kate Rich, Secretary of Rick Young; Cassie Byrnes, Secretary of Jason Leifer; Emily Banwell, Deputy Clerk, and others have been very helpful so far. I especially want to thank Amanda for digging right into this and being a huge help. There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 8:37 PM. Respectfully submitted, Emily Banwell