NEW SCOTLAND — The planning board here on Tuesday kept a public hearing open for a proposed nursery, after neighbors argued with the board and each other about noise and odor concerns.

“I live in a hamlet,” said Delaware Turnpike resident Karen McCaffrey. “If I wanted to live in a commercial zone, I would have. This has already had a negative impact on my home and my life.”

“It’s sickening to see somebody can’t buy a piece of property and use it the way it’s zoned,” said her neighbor, Dan Lynch, of Waldenmaier Road.

Matthias Keib, an owner of DJK Holdings, came before the board in April to request the use of 15.6 acres at 1120 Delaware Turnpike as a nursery for plants — a use allowed in the residential hamlet zone. Keib also applied to build a 24-foot-by-24-foot pole barn on the property to be used for sales.

Keib returned for a public hearing on his application on Tuesday.

“I have no problem with it,” said longtime planning board member Robert Stapf.

Previously, the board asked Keib to provide a more detailed site plan and photos of the proposed building, which Keib gave the board at the hearing.

Keib also provided a letter from the state Department of Transportation allowing curb cuts onto Delaware Turnpike, or state Route 443. Keib said that he would pave the commercial entry and driveway for 300 feet.

“It’s basically a nursery operation,” said planning board Chairman Charles Voss.

“That’s correct,” Keib said.

Keib owns a tree service in Delmar, down the road near the Bethlehem High School.

He told the board in April that the site would not have greenhouses, but would provide mature tree stock, around which he proposed a deer fence.

Previously, the property was used as a horse farm.

Keib plans to produce and sell firewood on the parcel, he said, and produce compost or topsoil. He said in April that he would not use composting processors that run on 1,000-horsepower engines, but that he would use a screen that uses a 100-horsepower engine.

The proposal included little lighting, he said.

“We’re not going to be open after dark,” Keib said.

He told the board that he would landscape the front and near his neighbors.

McCaffrey told the board that Keib had already altered the site, removing a berm and natural vegetation that buffered the sounds and smells of the trains that run behind her home and the speeding traffic that drives past.

“We now hear the trains as if they are in our home. [Traffic] lights are in our home 24 hours a day,” she said. “Dust settles everywhere. We are unable to open our windows now. All of this used to be absorbed by the trees.

“This parcel has been completely destroyed…I find it unbelievable that I can’t put a deck on my house or change a window without coming in here to let you know,” she said.

She also said that the work done had eliminated or reduced several frog species that she previously observed as a citizen scientist.

That a neighbor could cut and change a berm at 6 a.m. “under the cloak of darkness has me wowed,” she said. “I am angered that he needed no permit.”

McCaffrey also expressed concerns about multiple, loud truck deliveries of gravel and logs, and about pesticide used by nurseries seeping into her well water.

“The zoning use is allowed,” Voss said. “The problem is that it may be an intense use of that parcel.”

Planning board attorney Jeffrey Baker told the board that town code requires that a nursery limit off-site materials to be less than 50 percent of its sales.

“They have to grow, on site, at least 50 percent of their materials,” he said.

“All he did was in his rights as owner,” Voss said. He said that Keib was able to grade a road back into his property.

“They can’t disturb a certain amount of land,” he said.

Alan Hughes, of Delaware Turnpike, said, “I know these folks. I don’t have any objection to it.”

“Banging and clanging” of trains went on when he moved in and will continue when he no longer lives there, he said. Hughes praised Keib’s property near the high school.

“He’s not going to make a craphole of the place,” he said of Keib.

About his objecting neighbors, Hughes said, “The property was for sale. If they wanted a buffer, maybe they should have bought it. I think he’ll work with people. That’s part of rural life. It’s a ‘right to farm’ community. It’s part of rural life. I wish him luck.”

“We will not be louder than a train,” Keib told the planning board. “The well will be feeding one bathroom. I don’t want to dirty my plan,” he said about pesticides in the well water.

The board told Keib to come back with more information about the types of trees that would be planted, the number of trucks he expected, and the hours of operation and times he expected equipment noise.

Keib, after bringing in materials asked for by the board at April’s meeting and hearing that he needed to revise his application, asked, “Why is my business now delayed two months?”

“Whether it’s delayed a month, it’s something we have to do,” Voss said. “We have to be methodical about these things. You’re the first commercial business in the hamlet area. The first gets more scrutiny.”

Board member Thomas Hart told Keib that his application narrative “needs to be responsive to questions that have been brought up.”

“You need greater detail to show that greater than 50 percent of materials will be on site,” Baker said.

Other business

In other business, the planning board:

— Approved a site plan application for Country Club Partners LLC to build an accessory structure on the site of the former LeVie-Hilton barn.

Architect Abraham Sofer, of engineering firm Hershberg & Hershberg in Albany, said, “We don’t have, at this time, a builder. It will be a pre-manufactured building. We understand what the board wants.”

He agreed that the building’s two colors, as required by the planning board, would be earth-toned, and that the building would have a minimum of four architectural treatments like faux or real windows.

“You’re all set,” Voss said;

— Approved the final subdivision plat for Kensington Woods, a proposed neighborhood on 187 acres, on the site of the former Tall Timbers Country Club —an event that, as described by attorney for the project, Mary Beth Slevin, “has taken, quite frankly, longer than anyone expected.”

The project first came before the town in 2005. The subdivision was met with disapproval by many town residents, and was halted during the economic downturn of 2008;

— Set a public hearing for its June meeting for a special-use permit application by Christopher Dowd, and his daughter, Gabrielle, for “farming activity, personal.”

“It sounds like it’s chickens,” said Voss.

Gabrielle Dowd, 12, nodded.

“We’re looking to purchase up to 10 chicks,” said her father, Christopher Dowd.

The family plans to use a movable electric fence to move the chickens around their 1.2 acre property at 2532 New Scotland Road, he said. They also want a small, mobile coop.

The board said that chicken feed must be stored in a secure metal container.

“No roosters,” said board member Jo Ann Davies.

Voss told the Dowds that they could order their chicks now and keep them in an incubator until they received approval for the coop.

“I wouldn’t advise that, but you can,” Baker said; and

— Set up a public hearing for its June meeting for a special use permit application by Enlighten Power solutions, which hopes to build a 2-kilowatt solar array on a town-owned 10.8-acre parcel on Winnie Lane off Indian Fields Road, and across from LaGrange Road.