ALTAMONT — The Altamont Zoning Board of Appeals at a recent meeting raised a number of concerns over a proposed 11-lot subdivision located on 13 acres of land bounded by Western Avenue, Schoharie Plank Road West, Gun Club Road, and Marian Court.

The board at its Jan. 24 meeting touched on issues related to first-responder access, on-site water, and general site access. 

The board decided to conduct a coordinated environmental review of the project, meaning Altamont, Guilderland, Albany County, and New York State will have a chance to weigh in as the project undergoes a state Environmental Quality Review. 

Troy Miller is proposing to build 10 new homes on the 11 subdivided lots; one lot has an existing home on the site. Three properties would be accessed by a shared roadway located between 133 and 137 Western Ave; another three would be accessed directly from Western Avenue; and the remaining four lots would be accessible by a road placed between 115 and 117 Schoharie Plank Road West.

Miller is seeking variances for the four lots along Western Avenue because they do not have enough code-required road frontage. There are also multiple lot-line adjustments being proposed. 

Altamont Fire Chief Paul Miller raised road-width concerns with the four lots being proposed off of Western Avenue. He said ladder trucks need 20 feet “side to side” to set up .

A typical fire truck is about 9.5 feet wide, Miller said.

The shared driveway is going to be 12 feet wide. 

Stephen Walrath, Miller’s land surveyor, said everything will be in conformance with current fire-code requirements. 

“We might need to go beyond that,” Miller responded. 

Later in the meeting, after more discussion about the issue, Walrath said: “I think the width of the driveway and the turn-around is going to be based on … input from the fire department and also your engineer.”

Altamont Superintendent of Public Works Jeff Moller’s concern was Schoharie Plank Road West itself. “We had one house last year put up there and they tore it up pretty good,” Moller said. “I don’t know if it’s a matter of escrow money or something to take care of after the project’s done.”

Water 

Moller addressed another concern he had seen raised by some letter-writers: The number of water-main breaks on Schoharie Plank Road West. “This project really won’t affect that at all,” he said. “Because the water main isn’t in the street anyway; it’s off on the lawns. And adding more services onto it won’t really affect it. It’s just a matter of our infrastructure getting old.”

Chairwoman Deborah Hext asked if the village’s current water and wastewater infrastructure could handle the additional homes, and Moller told her it could. 

Hext said she heard from Schoharie Plank Road West residents that the proposed development area is always wet, but she added, “I don’t know what ‘always wet’ means to anyone.” 

“Always wet” to Hext means the area can’t be mowed.

But she also said she didn’t know if the proposed development area was “always wet,” because she hadn’t walked the property. 

She asked Walrath if a study had been done to determine the area’s water table.  “I don’t think to determine the water table,” he responded. “We’ve had it looked at for wetlands, which there are none.” 

Walrath said he had personally walked the entire property and “didn’t encounter any soft spots or whatnot.” There is a wetland on the other side of Schoharie Plank Road West, he said. 

Hext came back to the issues residents have with water.

“I’m just concerned about, you know, residents’ concerns about that area ‘always flooding’ or constantly being wet,” she said.

She asked Walrath what he can do to mitigate both the board’s and residents’ fears related to “flooding” or the area constantly being wet.

Walrath said test pits could be dug to determine the type of soil, “and if we encounter groundwater as far as you know where groundwater is.”

But he said the groundwater and flooding are two different issues.

Hext said she thought “an overabundance of groundwater would potentially lead to flooding.” Offering an example, she said, “If your ground is saturated with water, and we get … six inches of snow and then rain. Where is that going to go? It's going to flood. There’s just no ifs, ands, and buts about it.”

Moller was asked if he’d been in the proposed development area and had it been wet. He said he had and it hadn’t. 

Hext asked Walrath to do a test, which he said he would.

Hext said a lot of the board’s questions would be answered if the project had a Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPPP), but the proposed area of disturbance is less than five acres, the area that triggers the requirement for a SWPPP. According to the project narrative, 2.93 acres will be disturbed. 

Accessing the development

Hext asked, “Why have ingress and egress off of Schoharie Plank at all?”

She said, “What benefit is it to have two separate driveways instead of one off of a main road like Western [Avenue] and limit the impact to the residents on West Schoharie Plank?”

Walrath answered, “The benefit is it’s less distance from the road to the houses.” He said, when the lots on Schoharie Plank Road West were created, 66 feet was left open between two homes (115 and 117). “And from a planning perspective, that was specifically for a road coming in at some point in the future,” he said. “There’s no other reason why they would leave 66 feet wide.”

Village attorney Allyson Phillips said the village has a residential road right-of-way of 60 feet.

Hext responded, “I don’t know that we can guess on that.”

Walrath said houses have to have frontage on a public road.

And for the four houses proposed off of Schoharie Plank Road West, “We’re going to have to come up with, you know, 100 feet or more frontage out on Western Avenue to have these houses have frontage on a public highway.”

He said a private road won’t do because it would “landlock” the parcels, which isn’t allowed by state law. 

It wouldn’t be a village road, but a private road. 

Phillips said she would follow up with a memo to the board confirming what Walrath said was correct. 

Hext said if Miller was already requesting a variance, she didn’t see why he couldn’t ask for one that seeks to access all homes from Western Avenue.

Hext said she wanted to keep the discussion open on accessing the entire development from Western Avenue. “I really would like to try to figure out a way to not have that access on West Schoharie Plank.”

Miller told the board that, financially, if the project “moves to a road, it’s going to move to 24 houses. Because the dollars and cents don’t make sense.”

A private driveway, Miller said, is very expensive. That’s why “it’s hard to even find subdivisions under 40 houses. Just because of the cost of doing that infrastructure.”

Hext appreciated Miller’s viewpoint, but said she had a duty to the entire village. 

“I’m just trying to come up with a different plan to mitigate the impact on West Schoharie Plank,” she said. “I mean, I know Troy, you bought this property, it was for sale for a long time. And you finally want to develop it. I get that it’s your property, you should be able to develop it. But, you know, our job is to make sure that the existing homeowner, or neighborhood, or village is not adversely impacted by a new development or a new home going in or anything like that.”