Town of Varick Planning Board
Agenda
February 22, 2007
Agenda
February 22, 2007
Approve minutes January 25, 2007
Committee reports none
Information items
Report on Mt. Morris training. (Frankie Long )
Letter from Town Board regarding vote of support for Empire Biofuels
Old business
Use Table for Agriculture and Rural Residential Zone.
New Business
Commercial use. Managing car sales and garage sales that become indefinite businesses.
Response to SCIDA regarding negative declaration on Empire Biofuels SEQR (response is in comment below)
New subdivision proposals: None
Set next meeting time: Currently scheduled for March 22, 2007 7:00 pm
Adjourn
One response to “Varick Planning Board February 2007 Agenda”
The minutes will be posted once they are approved. Since it is time-sensitive, here is the text of the letter the board authorized in the last item of New Business.
February 23, 2007
Glenn Cooke
Seneca County Industrial Development Agency
1 DiPronio Dr
Waterloo, NY 13165
I am writing on behalf of the Varick Planning Board to express the Board’s our profound disappointment in your lack of responsiveness to our concerns with the Empire Green Biofuels environmental review. We provided written input to the State Environmental Quality Review in a letter dated January 29, 2007. We are an involved agency to the extent that commercial uses in the Varick portion of the Project Area require review by the Varick Planning Board. At it’s regular meeting of February 22, 2007, the Board voted unanimously to express our concern and disappointment with SCIDA’s handling of the State Environmental Quality Review.
We support development of both an ethanol plant and biofuel production on this site. However, a negative declaration of environmental impact for a project of this scale is inconceivable. The project involves the potential conversion of 4000 acres of wildlife habitat that has well-documented importance, as well as the construction of a power plant and a refinery. We also insist that the SCIDA, as lead agency, exercise appropriate oversight so to minimize negative impacts on the community SCIDA is supposed to serve. This was a critical moment for establishing and codifying that oversight, yet the agency utterly failed to do so.
How will SCIDA assure that the potential negative environmental impacts identified in our original letter are not realized? What firm commitments has the developer given
SCIDA, and how will those commitments be enforced?