Town Board: Latest causeway regs are slated for hearing
The First and Second Causeways could become an independent zoning district should the Town Board vote to amend the town code after a public hearing that it set last week for Friday, December 2, its final regular meeting of the year.
The hearing is set for 5:05 p.m. for the board to hear comments for and against the establishment of a causeway zone before December 31, the official end to the town’s extended moratorium on causeway construction.
Town Attorney Dowd said Monday that she had spent the past several months tweaking the proposed legislation. The biggest difference between the current proposal and the original unveiled in June is the definition of the causeway as an independent district with its own set of rules.
Another major change is that the minimum lot size for any new subdivision of property was increased to five acres from two.
The causeway regulations are actually contained in three legislative proposals. Another hearing on December 2 will cover a local law to repeal the Undeveloped Coastal Barrier District on the causeways; the district will be replaced by the causeway district.
Another hearing — the first of the three, scheduled for 5 p.m. — covers a proposal to amend the town’s wetlands code to establish a special causeway permit review process, which would be conducted by the Town Board.
If there is not significant opposition to the proposals, the Town Board could adopt them at the December 2 meeting — ending a moratorium that has been in effect for about 22 months, ever since the public reacted with the alarm to town approval for the reconstruction of the Zagoreos house, which had been the only house on the causeways before it was destroyed by fire. The regulations were developed to restrict any further development. In June, most speakers at the first set of hearings opposed the regulations as more likely to encourage construction than to restrict it and urged the town to find a way to buy the low-lying area’s private properties and preserve them as open space.
At a recent work session, board members talked about whether or not to extend the moratorium into 2012 and use the extra time to incorporate into the proposals the findings of wetlands delineator and environmental consultant Louise Harrison, who determined this fall that almost half of the First Causeway is state-protected wetlands.
OTHER PUBLIC HEARINGS
Also at the board’s regular meeting on Thursday, November 10, it set a public hearing for 4:55 p.m. on December 2 on a proposed amendment to the Near Shore District rules to allow impermeable driveways as long as storm-water runoff is captured and directed back into the aquifer.
The most significant change in the proposed legislation since it came up months ago for discussion by the Town Board is language giving homeowners the right to install up to 1,000 square feet of impermeable surface without having to submit a runoff plan prepared by a licensed engineer.
The board also set a hearing on legislation intended to make it easier for homeowners to obtain a building permit to install roof solar panels as part of the Long Island Unified Solar Permit initiative, which can result in tax breaks and rebates from LIPA.
