September 12, 2006

 

Mr. Herb Schech, Chair and Members

Patterson Planning Board

1142 Route 311/P.O. Box 470

Patterson, NY 12562

 

            Re:       Proposed Patterson Crossing development

 

Dear Chairman. Schech and Planning Board Members:

 

I’m a Croton Watershed resident, Suzannah Glidden, and board member of Croton Watershed Clean Water Coalition and Putnam County Coalition to Preserve Open Space.  I’m also a lake community resident living at Peach Lake in North Salem.  Like Lake Carmel, we have enough high-density housing traffic on small, narrow roads to certainly not need increased traffic which Patterson Crossing would bring.

 

The proposed Big Box development is to sit right on top of Lake Carmel, its residents and their drinking water supply.  The forest of the proposed site now holds rainwater from running off and allows it to seep into the ground and water supply sources, clean and filtered by this natural forest process.  To slash the forest and pave it over with impervious surface of roads, parking lots and building roofs create dramatic runoff of water that will not be filtered and recharged naturally by forest over a large area but which, by gravity, will be carried downhill polluted with the toxic soup of chemicals from vehicular road traffic.  Is that the kind of water that’s desirable to supply Lake Carmel residents in their well water?  And the sewage from this project that is to be treated underground:  is that also a desirable addition to well water supply?  We should be considering a Croton Watershed ban on phosphates, fertilizers and pesticides, not an increase in pollution to our drinking water.

 

With destruction of forest and digging of earth in construction come erosion of sediment and silt that will wash down into some man-made storm water controls while other runoff will inevitably go straight into Lake Carmel.  If those controls, like catch basins, are not carefully and frequently maintained, the clogged overflows will carry sediment and debris to Lake Carmel and escalate the filling-in of a once beautiful lake besides polluting its water.  Who is to pay for the necessary, frequent and expensive maintenance of storm water controls?  The developer?  He should but it’s tax payers who pay.  We have enough new high costs associated with Phase II storm water regulations coming at us in 2008 without additional storm water maintenance cost of this proposed unsustainable development.

 

And what of consideration for our wildlife habitat, where are the wildlife to go?  The developer suggests that there is a large tract of land across Route 84.  They are to make their way across Route 84, alive?  Not likely.

 

The myth that new commercial development will bring tax relief to residents is a myth continually pushed by developers and politicians wanting to push through their project.  It mesmerizes naïve residents while just the opposite occurs.  Within a few years, the rise in taxes for the cost of additional, very expensive infrastructure needed to support big development outpaces what taxes would have been without it.  Don’t be fooled.  Look at the tax facts in towns over-developed like Yorktown.

 

There are reasons why the Croton Watershed has strict regulations:  they are to protect our and NYC’s drinking water.  The Croton Watershed is built out.  It has been developed within regulations of NYC’s Memorandum of Agreement and Town Codes on almost all suitable land.  What remains is mainly unsuitable land for development that has vital wetlands, wetland buffers, steep slopes, rock outcroppings, poor soils.  For the Croton Watershed Town Boards and Town Planning Boards to approve projects on unsuitable land such as on the steep slopes of this massive Patterson Crossing development is unconscionable.  Favoring developers rather than water protection must stop, now, before our water has become degraded and it is too late.  Approvals or variances must be denied for irresponsible development.

 

Our most important resource is water.  Our watershed is a precious, uniquely high-quality water system but it is a fragile ecosystem and we must stop taxing it.  To put sufficiency and quality of our water at risk by not leaving sufficient forest and wetlands to filter, recharge and prevent flooding, to allow invasion of our wetlands and their critical buffer zones, to allow turbidity in our drinking water from erosion by building on steep slopes, to threaten sufficiency by over-building and reducing recharge areas, to allow this monster development to be built immediately on top of another community and their drinking water extend beyond the pale.  Protect our water, our residents, our wildlife:  stop Patterson Crossing now!

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hands Across the Border is an environment protection and advocacy organization dedicated to protecting the Croton Watershed across county lines by remedying pollution problems at their source.  HAB is one of fifty member groups of Croton Watershed Clean Water Coalition (CWCWC).