Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutCB 2024-07-30CB 2024-07-30 Final Page 1 of 6 CONSERVATION BOARD July 30, 2024 Hybrid Approved on September 24, 2024 Present: *Gian Dodici (chair), Steve Bissen, *Anne Clark, *Andrew Miller, Nancy Munkenbeck (arrived 7:29 p.m.), Craig Schutt, Tim Woods Absent: Jeanne Grace, Kate McKee (alternate) Liaisons: *Spring Buck (Town Board) Staff: Loren Sparling (Deputy Town Clerk) The meeting was called to order at 7.16 p.m. This is the first time that the Conservation Board has met since the passing of Bob Beck. A moment of silent reflection was then taken for the former Board member. G Dodici admitted that although he really only knew Bob from Board meetings, he was surprised at how hard he took his passing. Bob felt like a good friend, a colleague, someone who always had good advice. He was soft-spoken and very non-confrontational, and it was a pleasure to have known him. Unfortunately, he was taken too soon, but he did leave quite a legacy in the Town. He will be remembered fondly, and at some point, we will do something to honor him and his contributions to both this Board and the Town. A Clark noted that there is a trail near Bob’s house that she walks. On that trail, there is a little bridge which Bob was instrumental in getting erected. Within a few days of his passing, a sign was placed denoting that bridge as a memorial bridge to Bob. This type of outpouring from people says a lot about how important Bob was to this community. S Bissen hoped that the Town would rename the Rail Trail for Bob, given that he was instrumental in getting it created. Much like the Jim Schug Trail, there should also be the Bob Beck Rail Trail. S Buck acknowledged that there has already been discussion about a name change and will pass along the support of this Board for it. Review and Approval of Minutes from May 28, 2024 On motion made by S Bissen, seconded by C Schutt, the minutes of May 28, 2024, were unanimously approved as written, with G Dodici abstaining due to his absence in May. Report: Agriculture Advisory Committee C Schutt had distributed his report to Board members via email: “The Ag Committee met on July 10th. The conversation centered around a proposed horse manure composting facility at 1975 Dryden Road. Craig Anderson of the Planning Board attended the meeting to explain what had transpired at the Planning Board in their discussions on the proposed project. One of the major questions was is this an ag related business and if [it] falls under Ag and Markets Law. There were differing opinions and thoughts. The main takeaway was with the zoning rewrite that any proposals involving agriculture should come to the Ag Committee for consideration first and the AC would pass their recommendations on to the Planning Board and Town Board. I made the point that I would hope the CB gets the same consideration on issues important to us. Jason Leifer was in attendance, so I hope he takes that message back to the Town Board.” Report: Environmental Management Council (EMC) CB 2024-07-30 Final Page 2 of 6 S Bissen reported that the bylaws of the EMC were last updated about 20 years ago, so the last meeting of the EMC was focused on their revision. Report: Town Board S Buck informed Board members that a special meeting of the Town Board will be held tomorrow at 5.30 p.m. to discuss and vote on putting an 18-month moratorium in place on cryptocurrency mining facilities. In brief summary, the Town has declined permits to a company that wants to establish a cryptocurrency mining facility at 2186 Dryden Rd, and they are looking to challenge that action. Among other issues, such facilities have a heavy energy draw. S Buck also broached the need for a Conservation Board member to serve as a representative on the DRYC’s Client Committee in their selection of and interactions with a consultant to develop the lands north of Town Hall. S Buck concluded her report by stating that she had met today with Rick Young, who told her that they are proceeding with the engineering review of the big dam in Dryden. They received a grant to undertake this assessment to ensure that the dam is in good working order. Report: Climate Smart Communities Task Force A Clark reported that Dryden has been recertified as a bronze level Climate Smart Community due to its heating initiative. There was a lot of discussion about how best to use what will be upwards of $180,000 in grants towards climate smart projects. This money is due to the Clean Energy Community actions (actions that facilitate energy efficiency within the Town) that were completed by the Town, including the documentation of 10+ new air source installations. One option is to possibly fund more electric vehicles, yet the biggest gas users are the kinds of vehicles for which there is no good electric substitute (e.g., snowplows and emergency vehicles). Some feel that adequate charging capacity is currently lacking, and that charging capacity should come before vehicle development. Another possibility for the focus of these funds, which will be discussed at next month’s meeting, is energy upgrades to the fire stations. Lots of these stations have fallen way behind both in terms of safety and energy use efficiency. Should the Conservation Board have any additional ideas for projects, the Climate Smart Communities Task Force would be receptive to hearing them. G Dodici wondered if the Town could partner with the Dryden School District to help them begin the process of school bus electrification, as there are a lot of buses that do two or four runs a day, expending a lot of diesel fumes. Lastly, there has been a little bit of progress at the high school regarding pollinator gardens, but A Clark does not have the details on this. New Business: Drainage Issues along Johnson Rd T Woods informed the Board about the problems that have been occurring on the west side of Johnson Rd, between Rte 13 and Rte 366. For one, Thrive Church has water pooling on both sides of the building, as well as along the back. Ever since it was built, the facility has had a problem with water intrusion, both surface and subsurface. They are now having issues with water running up the inside of the block walls and into the facility, and then running down the length of the church and out the northern end into the parking lot. CB 2024-07-30 Final Page 3 of 6 Secondly, the new three-foot culverts that the highway department installed on Cindy Marquis’ property and beneath the rail bed (where the big washout was) have been blocked up by beavers, resulting in a huge lake between the properties of Cindy Marquis (39.-1-12.11) and Ron Szymanski (39.-1-22.6). Flooding has occurred all the way up to the second culvert, onto Marquis’ smallest pasture. Lastly, the property between Thrive Church and the Fish and Game Club has a new landowner, who put in a new driveway that extends west from Johnson Rd to the back of that property, with the intention of building a new house there. Unfortunately, the land where the house would be situated is now full of water, and the owner is not sure what to do about it. T Woods was asked to devise some proposals that might be given to the DEC, Army Corps of Engineers, Tompkins County Soil and Water, and any other agency that might be involved in fixing these issues. As a starting point, T Woods spoke with Jean Foley of the DEC, who recommended that he contact G Dodici as an expert on wetland drainage. G Dodici responded that he does not work in draining wetlands, but in restoring them, restoring habitat. He sees this all as a natural process, about which there is nothing inherently bad. He will not be supportive of doing anything to drain these wetlands, and respectfully stepped back from becoming involved. T Woods recalled that when he was a kid in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the land on both sides of Johnson Rd was dry, open farmland. (A 1960 topographic map that he has depicts only five farmhouses along Johnson Rd.) He acquired from Cornell University Library digitized versions of aerial photos of the area that range in date from 1938 to the present day. From these, it can be seen that the region was actively farmed until at least the 1970s, drained by well-established ditching patterns. Since that time, landowners have stopped farming, resulting in the properties going into successional growth. Once the successional growth went past the shrub stage, the beavers moved in, and that’s when the problems started. Google Maps shows at least seven or eight beaver ponds from Mix Brothers trucking company down through T Woods’ property and over to the rail bed. None of those ponds were there prior to the 1970s, so it was not an established wetland until just recently and the beavers have created all of that. T Woods proposed to Thrive Church that it work with the Conservation Board, DEC, Army Corps of Engineers, and whoever else might be needed, to increase the trapping of beavers so they do not rebuild their dams. Additionally, the extant dams should be removed in order to see what happens to the flow and drainage pattern. In so doing, the amount of sheet flow onto the church’s property may decrease and the ponds behind the church may be eliminated. T Woods has set up a meeting with Jean Foley, her beaver specialist, and the Thrive Church pastor to discuss what might be accomplished should the permitting go through. The National Wetlands Inventory shows there to be two main drainage patterns from Rte 13 to the rail bed. These run south to north, paralleling Johnson Rd, and eventually go under the rail bed and into Fall Creek. The main drainage channel is a small stream, about 3 feet across and 18 inches deep, that runs down across all properties until it reaches a wetland on property owned by Indian Milk & Honey and Dryden Produce; from here, water flows northwestward into two big ponds, and then westward towards the rail bed. T Woods related that some very deep ditching has also been put in, originating at Johnson Rd and going at about a 75º angle into that main drainage stream. Another ditch goes past Thrive Church and was doing an adequate job of funneling water until the beavers showed up. CB 2024-07-30 Final Page 4 of 6 Seeking clarification, S Buck verified that there were multiple issues happening simultaneously along Johnson Rd. For one, existing buildings (e.g., Thrive Church) are being impacted by water infiltration. There are different ways to protect a building from water infiltration that are either on the building itself or in its immediate vicinity (e.g., trenching, French drains). What she struggles with is that the frustrations that T Woods has shared about Johnson Rd’s landscape history are the same frustrations that she has heard from others about other landscapes in the Town (e.g., the lands north of Town Hall). Land that used to be farmland has since been deemed wetlands, and owners cannot do anything with it as a result. Indeed, that land has changed over time, and it is now protected. She wondered what stance the Conservation Board will take on this, advising that they be consistent in their thinking, and not argue for certain areas to be dried out and others to be protected. The Town has to be consistent in terms of how we educate the community about wetlands. Maybe there are recommendations for mitigation we could offer. T Woods explained that the purpose of bringing this topic up tonight was merely to inform the Board of an issue that has been recently identified. Concerned residents are just starting their investigation and currently have no remedial plan in place. Last week, he walked that entire drainage basin in order to assess the situation. Where is the water collecting? Where is it flowing? What kind of vegetation is present? (Cattails, reeds, other classic pond vegetation, and dying trees around the ponds; and hardwoods, softwoods, and tall shrubbery above the high water mark.) How bad is it? We have started to take pictures, and now know where the big ditches and most of the ponds are. What Thrive Church and neighboring landowners have asked T Woods to do is to try and help them navigate this state of affairs, given his connections with the Board and TC3. He has brought this to the Board to seek their input on the matter, as he is not a wetlands expert by any means; he does not need any decisions from the Board, just advice from its members. A Miller broached the subject of the Great Etna Swamp, located behind and to the west of the State Police barracks. He believes that a portion of this is now under a Finger Lakes Land Trust conservation easement. It is his understanding that the swamp once extended from Etna all the way past Johnson Rd because it captured the flow coming off of the hills, as well as the overflow from Virgil Creek. So at one point, the area was all wetland, and what we today perceive as individual wetlands are actually all interconnected. The alteration of one will impact the others. G Dodici acknowledged the land’s history, stating that prior to the arrival of farmers, those areas under discussion were more wet than dry. But we have a history of ditching and draining, and we still do it to this day. Wetlands have been converted into agricultural fields, and as far as he knows, such “prior converted wetlands” have no protection under any environmental law. The trouble arises when farms are abandoned, fields are allowed to go fallow, and after many decades pass, someone comes in wanting to drain an area because it was once farmland, even though it is now a potentially regulated wetland. Most of these wetlands probably do not have any protection under federal law because of recent Supreme Court rulings, but the DEC, potentially as a result of that ruling, has made their wetland protection laws more robust. In the past, wetlands had to be in a regulated wetland category for DEC to regulate them. Now, any proposed development in an area that might be a wetland needs to have a licensed delineator delineate the wetland; if the area is deemed a wetland, then the project would have to undergo an Article 24 review to obtain NYSDEC permits. So from a federal perspective, many of these wetlands are probably not being regulated by the Army Corps of Engineers, but there is the potential that the DEC may be regulating them. G Dodici then recognized S Buck’s contribution to the discussion, expressing the Board’s history of questioning and wondering why our Highway Department digs ditches the way that they do, why they chose to put in a lateral ditch well off their right-of-way on private property behind the church (if they in fact dug that ditch). These are legitimate questions to be CB 2024-07-30 Final Page 5 of 6 asked of them, and if their decisions are potentially causing problems, is there something that they should do to rectify those problems? One of the issues in the area under discussion is that everything is so flat that you can’t really drain it without the use of a pump, and then there’s nowhere to send the water. And when the beavers build up their impoundments, they are basically flattening the landscape even more, making it even harder to drain. So from a water management perspective, the best thing to do would be to trap the beavers and remove those dams. T Woods related that a wildlife specialist removed beavers (via a DEC permit) from the church’s property last year, but they weren’t gone for very long. They came right back. For the foreseeable future, Jean Foley recommended getting another beaver permit from the DEC and do the same. He also mentioned that Cindy Marquis recently talked with Rick Young about the two culverts that were installed on her property for the Rail Trail and Dryden Fiber. She addressed the flooding that was occurring on her property (and that of Ron Szymanski) and inquired why the culverts weren’t being cleaned out to let the water flow through, but did not receive a satisfactory reply. Jean Foley informed T Woods that the Army Corps of Engineers has not plotted all of the wetlands that they have delineated and that are under their protection on a map; however, all such wetlands have been entered into a database that is maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers. She further stated that the 12.4 acre rule is for the DEC, not for the Army Corps. The Army Corps has jurisdiction all the way down to a half-acre wetland. T Woods appreciates any input that Board members could give and thanked everyone for their time tonight. He will keep the Board updated as to what transpires along Johnson Rd. In answer to a question from S Bissen, T Woods said that the knocking down of a beaver dam is considered draining a wetland, and therefore requires a permit to do so from the DEC. This is separate from the DEC permit to trap beavers. N Munkenbeck recounted that, in Ellis Hollow, the Highway Department put in an additional drain, such that the beavers were unsuccessful in their efforts to dam the stream and left the area. They did succeed in damming it further downstream, though. A Clark relayed that a considerable number of beaver dams have been knocked down in the vicinity of the Owasco headwaters roundabouts Hile School Rd. At the same time, the beavers have been actively moving. The problem is a moving problem, and the beaver life cycles are a part of this; what you do now to address the problem will not be the same as what you do five years from now. The fix used on some big dams is to insert a low-level opening, but that is dependent on how deep the water is. Three feet is way too shallow for such a fix, six feet is pushing shallow to insert an opening that the beavers would ignore. But these are problematic, temporary fixes. Storms can do things to beaver dams. Regarding beaver numbers, young beavers who are beginning to dam do so near their parents; the beavers move out only when enough trees in the vicinity have been eaten that it is no longer efficient. And so it is a moving problem. She suggests that everybody go back to first principles. What is a wetland? What is a wetland now? What is a wetland going to be if the beavers move? We should be attuned not only to changes in a wetland, but also to changes in beaver dynamics. Because the problem is dynamic, a solution today will not be a solution in the future. A Clark felt that the increased wetland protections that have come in at the State level are great and noted that many of our farmlands are reverting back to wetland. She attributes this last point to the fact that tiles underlay almost all of our farmlands, and as those tiles get displaced by various processes, areas suddenly turn wetter or vernal pools are created in places that have not had vernal pools for 150 years. She knows that some would welcome the CB 2024-07-30 Final Page 6 of 6 reappearance of these vernal pools but understands the frustrations of others who are unable to use their 50-year-old structures because of the ponding. T Woods imparted that he, Ron Szymanski, and Cindy Marquis were not upset that portions of their properties were being inundated, because it actually helps. If they begin using that land for cattle, they could pump some of that water into cisterns to water the cattle. The water is not affecting grazeable land enough to diminish herd size, so they are looking at this as a plus. As long as the water does not continue to flood their pastures to the point that they are unusable, they would be willing to use the bigger ponds as a form of mitigation for getting rid of the beavers from the beaver ponds uphill. New Business: Open Forum G Dodici recognized that the Board’s underlying concerns with water management in the Town remain. Things don’t seem to be changing for the better (or even changing at all), so he is at a loss as to next steps. N Munkenbeck communicated that she attended one session of the Cayuga Lake Summit (held at Stewart Park on July 16), that session being “How Sustainable Winter Management Standards Help Reduce Road Salt Pollution.” (She was not able to attend the session entitled “Tracing and Treating PFAS in the Finger Lakes.”) Her big takeaway was that the most road salt pollution comes from parking lots and that this causes more pollution in waterways than salt from the roads. Most road crews are doing a pretty good job of trying to maximize efficiency and not do things wastefully; they start to salt before a winter storm begins and continue to salt as the snow piles up, thus going through the stages of when the salt is most effective. A Miller surmised that the polluting source (parking lots or roads) depends on location. In the Adirondacks, most of the salt runoff that is poisoning personal wells originates from the roads, as parking lots are only located in the bigger towns. N Munkenbeck said that the session was general in nature and not specific to Ithaca. It addressed how, when, and where one applies road salt; the effect of road salt on snow, slush, and ice; and when the application of salt will be most effective. S Buck stated that there are many factors in play when it comes to how to salt roads that this changes with every snowfall. It depends on wind speed, type of snow (dry or wet), time of day, and temperature. G Dodici reported that the Community Science Institute (CSI), who collects water samples from all of the watersheds, has not seen any spikes in salt concentration, either seasonally or over time. If salt is making it into our systems, for now it seems to be diluting down to background levels. It does not seem to be accumulating, at least in the areas where CSI is sampling. S Bissen informed the Board that he volunteers for CSI, sampling on Midline Rd and Irish Settlement Rd. He too has noticed that chloride levels have not really increased, and so he wonders where exactly the salt is going if not in the water. There being no further business, on motion made by S Bissen and seconded by N Munkenbeck, the meeting was adjourned at 8.30 p.m. Respectfully submitted, Loren Sparling Deputy Town Clerk