Planning Board: Stormwater law will add costs for home developers

The Planning Board continued its review of the town’s draft stormwater code at its Tuesday night meeting, a law that would impose new restrictions on stormwater runoff. The law is one of several runoff prevention laws that the Town of Shelter Island must adopt in order to comply with state-imposed Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4) rules under the Clean Water Act.

The stormwater law would require Building Department review of Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plans (SPPP) for “construction activity including clearing, grading, excavating, soil disturbance or placement of fill that results in land disturbance of equal to or greater than one acre, or activities disturbing less than one acre of total land area that is part of a larger common plan of development or sale, even though multiple separate and distinct land development activities may take place at different times on different schedules.”

Board President Paul Mobius said the law “has a lot of stuff … that really doesn’t apply to this town,” a sentiment that echoed discussion at  the board’s March 8 meeting.

During that meeting, architect Ian MacDonald agreed: “The codes are really developed for New York State and not for our particular situation here. A lot of it seems to be dealing with more urban developments, large-scale developments, more densely-populated construction, as opposed to the rural, residential one- to two-acre zoning we have here.”

He said the code would impose costs on home-J4

​owners to complete the stormwater plans: “Every applicant will have to go to an engineer, they’ll have to get a survey with certain specifications. They’ll have to know what soils are there, which will require test holes. You’ll also need a design professional to interpret this data, perform calculations, observe the installation and sign off on this.” All of this costs money, he said.

Mr. Mobius suggested that the draft law would have other effects, like the developers undertaking much less landscaping than normal, in order to stay below the 1-acre limit of disturbance. He said  the law requires the board to designate a stormwater management officer and that the likely stormwater management officer, building inspector Billy Banks, would need training in reviewing stormwater pollution prevention plans.

“It’s a pretty tough code if you start reading it,” explained board member Emory Breiner. “How much of this can we tweak? I don’t want to give them an inch more than we need to,” Mr. Breiner said.

Mr. Waddington said, “I would like to try to tailor this thing to what our needs are … I don’t think anyone can rationally argue against trying to contain stormwater runoff, but are we using a sledgehammer to drive a tack?”

He added that Town Attorney Laury Dowd’s “feeling is that the more vague it is, the better it is, because you can kind of interpret it as you want.”

At Tuesday night’s meeting, board member John Kerr took issue with some of the language in the code, such as “reasonable,” which he called vague. “‘Reasonable’ can mean a lot of different things to different people,” he said.

Board members also discussed:

CLARK CAPITAL MINOR SUBDIVISION

Three lots plus one parkland lot on Cartwright Road. At its Tuesday night meeting, the board voted to extend the final application deadline until September 28. “They’re still dealing with the Health Department,” explained Mr. Mobius.

BOZAAN/HANNEMA MINOR SUBDIVISION

Two lots on Sunshine Road.

The board approved the State Environmental Quality Review Act determination on the subdivision, which said the lot split would not have a negative impact on the environment.

WHITE MAJOR SUBDIVISION

Nine large lots on 53 acres on West Neck Creek. The fire department is recommending that the developer install two 10,000 gallon fire cisterns, board member John D’Amato reported. The proposed locations of the cisterns will allow the subdivision to be serviced by just two cisterns instead of three.

KLENAWICUS MAJOR SUBDIVISION

Eight lots at the corner of Burns and Cartwright roads.

Mr. Waddington announced that the sale of the property is expected to close next month. After the closing the sellers will have four months to install the remaining required cistern.