More About the Haul Road

At the Greenport Planning Board meeting on Tuesday night, Ray Jurkowski, the board's consulting engineer, mentioned a floodplain permit as something missing from Colarusso's application for the haul road--the part of the haul road that passes through South Bay. This, to Gossips' knowledge, was the first time in the process that a floodplain permit has been mentioned. It was noted that this permit needed to be issued by Hudson Community Development & Planning Agency (HCDPA). At the Greenport Planning Board meeting, P. J. Prendergast, the project engineer for Colarusso, asserted that the proposed haul road was in a floodway not a floodplain.

P. J. Prendergast|Photo: Julie Metz  

Curious about the process for issuing a floodplain permit, Gossips attended the HCDPA meeting on Thursday. There it was revealed that it was David Clouser, the engineer now consulting with the Hudson Planning Board, who had made everyone aware of the need for a floodplain permit. Sheena Salvino, executive director of HCDPA, explained that a floodplain permit has not been issued in the six years since she has been here, and consequently she needs to research the permitting process. If information about the process cannot be found among the agency's records, a permitting process must be established. "Colarusso wants us to go faster than that," she said, "but we cannot go faster than that." She indicated that Prendergast was telling her that writing a letter would be sufficient.

On the topic of flooding, at the Greenport Planning Board meeting on Tuesday, Planning Board member Michael Bucholsky asked about the impact of Superstorm Sandy on the road passing through South Bay. Prendergast asserted it was the same as Route 9G: "The water went up; the water went down"--implying that, after the water went down, the roadway was the same as it was before. These images, provided by the South Bay Task Force, tell a different story.

COPYRIGHT 2017 CAROLE OSTERINK