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Saving Sterling Forest - 1 August, 2005
Regarding your editorial, "Saving Sterling Forest" (July 25): It did not accurately portray the level of potential impact. It's actually far worse.
The editorial stated, "To facilitate access to the development, the plan is to blast a 98-foot-tall gouge through a tree-covered ridge. According to JoAnn Dolan of the Sterling Forest Partnership ... the new road would create a 'scar as big as a football field.'Ÿ"
The "gouge" referred to is just the first of many that would be required for the project. It is situated at the entrance road, where a 98-foot-high cut into bedrock would be required above the 45-foot-wide roadway.
On the down slope, there would be a maximum of 28 feet of fill, ending at a 20-foot-high retaining wall. The retaining wall is proposed because the fill cannot be placed any farther - the wall would sit at the boundary of a state-regulated wetland, with the fill covering the entirety of the 100-foot wetland buffer.
The scar would not just be "as big as a football field." The football field reference was to the width of the scar, at 310 feet. The scar itself would actually cover in excess of two acres - and as stated, this is just for the first of many cuts and fills proposed.
This one is the worst, in part because the scar would be directly visible across the wetland about 100 yards away from Long Meadow Road, which passes through the middle of Sterling Forest State Park. As such, it would be imposed upon every single user of the park, each one looking to experience the serenity and beauty that one should expect in this vast open space, so hard-fought and dearly paid for. Instead, they would be treated to a scar on the landscape more akin to the blasted rock cuts one sees along Route 80 or 287.
In total, the project proposes about 10 major cuts and fills, including one with 30 feet of fill that encroaches 65 feet into a wetland buffer, and another that would leave 52-foot rock cuts on either side of a 22-foot road.
All of this is occurring in the middle of a state park purchased with much sweat, many tears, and $78 million of New York and New Jersey taxpayer money, on a parcel that is part of an unfragmented forest, with the highest documented species diversity in the state of New York, and at the heart of the historic Sterling Estate.
Stephen M. Gross
Warwick, N.Y., July 27
The writer is an environmental consultant for the Sterling Forest Partnership.
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