→ George Janes’ Photosimulation Critique of Durst DEIS”

George Janes of the Environmental Simulation Center has studied and critiqued the photosimulations provided in Durst Draft Environmental Impact Statement. The link to the entire document is below followed by Janes’ summary of conclusions.

“The photosimulations presented in the DEIS do not accurately disclose the proposal’s impact on visual resources. They have not been performed according to the accepted standards for photosimulation in the environmental review process. They should NOT be used as evidence as to the project’s impacts on visual resources, as they do not accurately depict the action proposed. Since the Scoping Document called for photosimulations, and since the photosimulations produced do not accurately depict the proposed development’s impact on visual resources, the Lead Agency should require the Applicant to produce additional materials that fully disclose those impacts.”

Peer Review of Chapter 14 “Community Services and Fiscal Impacts”

SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

There are a number of omissions and material errors in Chapter 14 that render it invalid. Camoin Associates finds that Chapter 14 does not meet the requirements of the Carvel DEIS Final Scoping Document because it does not accurately reflect the fiscal impacts of the proposed project. As such, Camoin Associates recommends that the Town of Pine Plains Planning Board, as Lead Agency for the Carvel DEIS:

(a) reject Chapter 14 in its current incomplete form,
(b) require that substantial revisions be made by 1133 Taconic, LLC/Landmark Land
Company, Inc. (“Project Sponsor”),
(c) ensure that such revisions are reviewed by an expert party and that the revisions
are made to the satisfaction of the Lead Agency, and
(d) provide the general public the opportunity to comment on the revised version of
Chapter 14.

Another issue that Jane Waters gave testimony about at the March 12th Carvel DEIS hearing was the Gravel Mine and its impacts on the Hamm Brook. She said that in doing the habitat studies they found spawning trout in the upper Ham Brook and Dan Stone (from Chazen) said because of that they have located much of the construction closer to the golf course in the next watershed. However, the gravel mine is just across Mt. Ross Road from where the Ham Brook is located. And she gathers not only are they going to mine the gravel at the mine, but will also truck in stone excavated elsewhere on the property and then break it down in the gravel mine area and then truck it back out to use on the property. Won’t that create a huge amount of gravel dust that could get into the stream? (See page 3 of the appendix 10.3: “Excavated rock would be loaded onto trucks at the excavation location and delivered to the on-site rock crusher area for processing. A stockpile of crushed rock would be created for future use. Economically it is favorable to co-locate the rock crushing and concrete fabrication processes so the cost to truck material across the site is minimized. Rock crushing and concrete fabrication operations would most likely be performed near the existing sand and gravel mine site where both fine and coarse aggregate are readily available and close to a major roadway for cement and additive deliveries.”).

Has the DEIS detailed adequately how they plan to prevent gravel dust contaminating the Hamm Brook trout spawning area? Especially because a seasonal stream that is directly contiguous to the gravel mine empties into the Hamm Brook.

She said she is also concerned about the heavily laden trucks that will be using that intersection coming from and going to other parts of the property, especially considering the new road that will go south from 199 to Stissing Mountain Road that will be almost across 199 from Mt. Ross and Windmill Hill Roads. Will there be enough sight distance coming east on 199 coming around that corner? Won’t that be a very dangerous area?

I. Related to school impacts:
1. While Carvel says in the Chapter 1 overview they are basing their tax rates on the 2005 year for County, town and fire district and on the 2004-2005 year for school taxes (including property taxes that have to be raised per student – see note at the bottom of Table 1.7 on page 1-64 for instance), in fact in their analyses they actually use an “average cost per capita” and “average cost per pupil” method of analysis that uses five year averages to compute taxes (see p. 14-55 and subsequent pages). The relevant page is 14-59. Look at Table 14.35, Property Taxes per pupil: 2000-2005-PPCSD. They average the five year taxes per pupil as $8,147; saying that makes sense to do in order to even out blips from year to year. However, in fact the taxes are going up each year, not fluctuating as the graph shown here demonstrates. The only fluctuation is a slight difference in the amount of increase year over year. I think they therefore underestimate the taxes per student in their analyses. The values they list per year are $7,006 (2000-2001); $7,464 (2001-2002); $8,008
(2002-2003); $8,616 (2003-2004); $9,640 (2004-2005). To see how this throws off the estimates if you look at their appendix 14-2, Table B.8 you’ll see that the way they figure the data they say the property tax per pupil needed by year 5 is $9,666, which is in fact only a few dollars off what was actually needed in year 2004-5.2. Other ways they have used data that might skew the results:

• I do not think they have not included the children generated by the 99 half acre lots that are “previously approved” which they plan to develop (there are about 9 houses currently there, but they can build 90 more). Also they have used the .55 as the multiplier for school children per primary home. That number is accurate according to census and other data for existing primary homes. However both the studies the school commissioned by Paul Seversky and the fiscal impact study “Impacts of Growth in Pine Plains” completed by Phillips Preiss Shapiro in May of 2006 used a multiplier of .71 because that is the number of school children per new home in the area. In fact, given the number of bedrooms in the planned houses it might be more appropriate to estimate numbers of children based on numbers of bedrooms. And note that James Sheldon in his remarks in the recent hearing uses a number of 1.35 child/new home based on the numbers per new home in the Arlington School District farther south in Dutchess County (see his remarks in “Durst Watch (3) “By the Numbers” posted on his website: www.littletownviews.com).

II. Municipal Costs (including fire district):

Looking at the analysis for Pine Plains the Carvel DEIS also uses a five year trailing average “to even out the blips.” When you look at table 14.31 on page 14-57 you see the expenditures for years 2001 through 2005 and here you do see blips, especially in 2002, which was higher than the other years by more than $200,000. However there are two small footnotes that say the 2004 total is the town budget (i.e. not actual expenditures) and the 2005 total is a “projected expenditure from the 2005 budget.” In fact the actual expenditures for those 2 years were substantially higher (more than $400,000 higher in 2004 and just under $400,000 higher in 2005). Thus the baseline
average municipal expenses they base their calculations on ($1,408,761) should have been substantially higher, with the actual 5 year average being $1,573,582. If they had used the actual 2005 figure it would be $1,849,127.

III. Related to highway costs:

1. In reviewing Chapter 14 (see pp-182-183) although Carvel/Durst acknowledge that 10.2 miles of roadway (a 26% increase) will need to be built and therefore plowed, swept and maintained; they say the resultant increase in the Pine Plains highway budget under the proposed action (i.e. mostly second home scenario) will only need to increase staff by 8.2 % or .37f.t.e. and the budget would only increase by $44,914. They give the baseline budget as $546,250. Thus the resulting budget would be $591,164.
However, under the mostly primary home scenario they say under their comparison of the highway budgets of other towns the size of the projected population of Pine Plains in year 10 the budget would be $1,146,379. They say the department would have to increase by 66%. Under just a percentage increase of the budget that falls between 26% and 66% would give a range of increase of $144,721 and $360,525 and added to the current budget of $546,250 would result in a projected budget of between $690,971 and $906,775. Either way you are talking about real money. But, don’t you have to plow, sweep and maintain whether most of the residents are part time or
full time? I realize the wear and tear might be less with a lot of part timers, but most of the expenses would be the same, wouldn’t they? So it seems to me that the higher estimates would have to replace the $591,164 number even in the part time scenario.”

2. Also even their estimates about highway costs in the impacts section of the DEIS do not agree with their estimate based on an interview with the Highway Superintendent discussed in the Mitigation section on page 14-203 where the give a budget figure for the Highway Department of $1,116,953 for the preferred scenario (see the third line on that page compared to what is said on page 14-182). It looks as if there might have been further discussion about additional equipment the Highway Department is saying they need. That might in fact be a more realistic estimate than they have in
their impacts section, but this discrepancy needs to be reconciled. I think there are similar discrepancies in their estimates for the full time scenario in the two sections (see also p.14-203 for the full time costs in the mitigation section and compare them to the costs discussed on page 14-182 and following pages).

IV. Additional comments related to police and fire:

1. In their analyses about both the police department and the fire departments in Pine Plains, similar to the way they analyzed the costs for the fire department, they give much lower figures for their “preferred scenario,” which I question. In fact, empty houses can burn and empty houses can be broken into. The local paper, the Pine Plains Register Herald just this week contains an editorial and both papers contain articles about recent rashes of burglary in the area. The editorial says that burglary is the most common crime in Dutchess County. While I’m not in favor of gated communities, at least in a gated community you have some idea who is coming into the area. This development will have easy access to a highway and enterprising thieves could rob a few of these high end unoccupied houses and be well on their way before any alarm is sounded. It seems that the police department will have to do much more frequent patrols of the area. The only way they can do that is increase staffing even in the part time scenario. Of course, if Durst really wanted to mitigate the impacts this would impose on the town, the development could commit to hiring their own security
force. The same kinds of issues apply to the fire department. Lightning strikes could start a fire on a street with unoccupied houses and the fire might be quite advanced before anyone called it in.

V. Mitigation:

I thought that mitigation in SEQRA related to things the developer can do to mitigate the impacts caused by his development, but over and over in the fiscal impact chapter the mitigation suggested is either the town can raise bonds to cover costs (which will result in an increase in taxes for all residents) or the allocation in the budget of moneys per each department can re reallocated; i.e. take some from one department and give it to another. I think that is unacceptable (rob Peter to pay Paul).

VI. Marketing Plan:

The Marketing Plan was developed in the height of a very strong real estate market which has since sunk to lows not seen for many years. Large farms are still selling to wealthy New Yorkers for high prices, but otherwise the market has largely dried up. My real estate friends say that only 20 houses in Pine Plains were sold in the last year. The initial market analysis looked at the history of sales in the area and at the potential population of “uber affluent” in the greater NY metro area who might be at the age and income level that they would be looking for a high end country home.
However it was deficient in that it did not take in to account the other similar developments currently on the drawing boards in near by towns (just look at Darryl Gangloff’s article on Carvel and the three other golf developments in the current issue of Dutchess Magazine). In addition to golf developments, there are other developments, such as Depot Hill (122 single family homes and 16 town houses) in Amenia that are planned around horse farms. If you look at the last page of the Marketing study there are three conditions under which their consultant says the predicted results will no longer be reliable: if the economy turns sour, if the housing
market has a downturn and if there are competitive developments aimed at the
same market in the area. Well, all three of these issues have now come to
pass.

John Lyons, an attorney with Grant and Lyons; George Janes, a visual impact expert at the Environmental Simulation Center in New York City; and Lisa Nagle, a planner based in Saratoga Springs, have each submitted letters to the Pine Plains Planning Board questioning the assumptions and methodology behind the document and urging the board to delay any decision on completeness until the flaws are corrected.
According to Mr. Lyons, “The defects…unless corrected…will undermine the integrity of the forthcoming substantive public comment,” a reference to the hearings, required under SEQRA, at which the Planning Board and the developer receive feedback from the public.

The Environmental Simulation Center provided a letter to the Planning Board offering a critique of the Proposed Draft Environmental Impact Statement, stating that the visual impact of the proposed Durst/Carvel development “cannot be accurately described using materials published in the PDEIS.”

In his 16-page letter, Mr. Janes details flaws in the methods and assumptions used in Chapter 7 of the DEIS, which deals with the visual impacts of the proposed 1,000-home development. He cites several failures on the part of the developer to show “worse case scenarios,” as required by SEQRA, including photo simulations that were created using the wrong type of camera lenses and fail to include driveways and lawns. The effect was to lessen the true impact of the development on the viewscape.

Lisa Nagle’s letter highlighted a host of flaws in the document, including its failure to adequately address the fiscal impacts of the attached and semi-attached residential units and, most importantly, its failure to reconcile the seeming contradiction between the scale and layout of the development with the goals outlined in the Town Comprehensive Plan, which, among other things, cites an almost universal desire among residents that the town retain its rural character (the Durst/Carvel development, if approved, would nearly double the size of Pine Plains).

Mr. Lyons concludes his letter by urging the Planning Board to avoid needlessly rushing to a decision, despite the pressure it may be feeling from the applicant. “Don’t let the tail wag the dog by curtailing your completeness review due to time concerns.”

Links:

John Lyons Overview of PDEIS Critiques.
George Janes’ Assessment of the PDEIS Visual Impact Study
Lisa Nagle’s Assessment of the DPDEIS
Becky Thornton’s Letter Critiquing Carvel as a “Green Development”Fiscal Impact Study