To the Editor:

I am writing to voice my concerns about the process and handling of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement that is currently before the Guilderland Planning Board.

This is a very large project by the Rapp Road Development LLC that wishes to develop three sites totaling approximately 46 acres of land in the area surrounding Crossgates Mall. In this project, they are proposing to build 270 apartments, some with retail space below, some in a complex, and a Costco with fuel pumps. A third site is also being analyzed for an additional 90 apartments.

The DEIS that was submitted to the town is incomplete and has been since first submitted in draft form late last year. The planning board and it’s “consultants and experts” were charged with reviewing the DEIS for completeness and meeting all of the guidelines set forth in the DEIS.

As the lead agency for this project, the planning board is responsible for ensuring that all information is contained in the documentation and is shared as required with the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation.

This means that there is proper notification to town residents that includes comment periods, public hearings, and dissemination of all pertinent documents in public areas for review by the public. The town posted the DEIS on its website as well as providing a copy to the local library.

Other agencies/groups that also needed to be sent copies include the DEC, the city of Albany, the Albany County Planning Department, the Albany Pine Bush Preserve Commission, and the New York State Department of Parks Recreation and Historic Preservation to name a few. This document is quite lengthy at approximately 2,000 pages long.

This document was sent to the town planning board on a thumb drive by the Rapp Road Development Corp.

The timeline for review by the planning board was from Dec. 25, 2019 until its decision to accept it as complete on Feb. 12, 2020. At that point, public comment commenced with an end date of March 25, 2020.

A public hearing was tentatively scheduled for March. The public hearing has gone through several postponements, which is understandable during these trying times of living with a pandemic. That being said, the new date for a public hearing has been set for May 13, 2020 by video conference. This has its own set of issues, but will not be addressed in this letter.

Ken Kovalchik [town planner] was contacted a week or two ago and told that there were wetland reports missing from the DEIS. He sent one of the two missing reports to Lynne Jackson of Save the Pine Bush, but to date, the third report has not yet been filed as part of the DEIS. This still renders the DEIS incomplete at this time.

Issues about the size of the DEIS and amount of time to comment and review were raised at a planning board meeting on Feb. 12, 2020. This video can be viewed online on the town’s website.

When questioned about this, Mr. [Stephen] Feeney [planning board chairman] said he would probably grant a reasonable time period of extension to review the document. He also went on to say that he had read through the document and that, although it is large, there are numerous tables and the report was not that cumbersome to get through.

Really Mr. Feeney? Your board and “consultants and experts” did not find that there were reports missing that were supposed to be submitted? Who else read through the report?

Mr. Kovalchik? Is this in your scope of duties as the town planner? Did you read the report? If so, how did you miss these reports? You have had the reports for at least three months yet, when given more time to review, nothing was done and no mention of missing reports or even an effort to get them in the record until pointed out by a member of the public.

In the town board meeting, Mr. Barber was asked how the DEIS could be deemed complete with the reports missing. You can view his response on the tape of the meeting. His response was that they had it at one point and sent their copy over to DEC.

He further stated that he thinks that is what happened, but was not sure. He said it was part of the submission and he doesn’t know where it ended up. It’s listed in the EIS — “it could have been misplaced.” 

Really Mr. Barber? The DEC allows and, in fact, encourages agencies to send DEIS reports electronically.  If the town sent it to the Pine Bush Preserve Commission electronically, did you also send it electronically to the other agencies?

If so, how would you “misplace” a report that, in fact, was never submitted to the town? Would the town actually print out numerous paper copies of a 2,000-page document and then mail them at an approximate cost of $20 each to all of the recipients? Would you actually send your only copy of a document to another agency?

In fact, Mr. Kovalchik asked the Rapp Road Development Corp for the reports. He received one and forwarded it to Ms. Jackson. The remaining report, as I stated above, has not yet been received.

At this juncture, is it prudent for the town to go ahead with the DEIS, approved as complete, with a report still missing? I would think not.

Not one person or agency has had the ability to review the reports to make any substantive comment about it to the town in a timely manner. These types of errors are inexcusable for a project this size and given the number of agencies and groups that have reviewed it.

I am quite surprised that other state and county agencies have not noticed that these reports are missing. This does not bode well for the process and those charged with the review and commenting on the project.

This project needs to be halted and the process needs to be started over, from step one. In addition, since the Guilderland Planning Board was charged with lead agency duties, it should not continue in this role.

Robyn Gray

Guilderland

Editor’s note: Robyn Gray is a volunteer with the Guilderland Coalition for Responsible Growth.

See related story.