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Group Came Prepared to Fight Sterling Forge - 19 July, 2005
By Mike Dawson
Times Herald-Record
mdawson@th-record.com
Tuxedo – Last night's public hearing on the proposed Sterling Forge development wasn't made up of typical off-the-cuff, not-in-my-backyard pleas from people resistant to change.
Instead, an organized and passionate group of informed residents and environmental experts with hand outs, over-head projection sheets, maps and water table charts, attempted to pick apart the proposal that would carve out a 570-acre housing development in the middle of Sterling Forest State Park.
In three-minute intervals those opposed to the proposal systematically inundated the Town Board with arguments and mounds of paperwork meant to sway, or at the very least delay, its decision.
While many of the 50 or so speakers addressed the devastation the development would bring to the pristine park, most arguments were based on the development's environmental impact study that was recently revised by the developer, Sterling Forest LLC.
Plans were pulled last year when the proposal, which included an 18-hole championship golf course, faced likely defeat because of the potential impact on the timber rattlesnake, a threatened species in New York.
The golf course has now been scratched from the development in the revised plans, a move that Lou Heimbach, president and chief executive officer of Sterling Forest LLC, said should mitigate the impact on the snakes.
Most in attendance last night, many of whom were members of Sterling Forest Partnership, a local preservation group, disagreed.
One the main arguments was laid out by Stephen Gross, an environmental consultant for the partnership. He claimed the impact study was incomplete, that it failed to describe the impact the development's road cuts into the bedrock would have on the landscape and the park's watershed. He said the impact is described only in the study's maps but not in the text, where it can be better analyzed.
"You should be aware of this," Gross told the board. "There's nothing to study in what they've given you."
Others noted the study's demographic data was tabulated using 1990 Census numbers, not the most recent 2000 Census numbers.
And with every plea came warnings that the beauty of the park and its resources are in jeopardy.
"Once you allow a development to punch a 107-house hole right in the heart of Sterling Forest, there's no turning back the clock," said Don Weisse, who heads conservation and advocacy arm of the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference, a group that helps maintain hiking paths in area parks.
The next step will be for the developer to respond to last night's comments. Then the board could make its decision.*
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