by David Flint
The Stephentown Zoning Board, continuing their deliberations on a Motocross track proposed by Howard Commander for a site adjoining New Lebanon off of Webster Hill Road, is not satisfied yet that the application for a zoning variance is complete. A revised plan for the track along with a noise study had been submitted to the Board since last month but not in time for sufficient review by Board members prior to this month’s meeting last Thursday, June 2. Also, a number of questions were raised by the attorney representing neighboring landowners regarding the noise study, the adequacy of the plan and changes made to it.
Pat Prendergast, Commander’s engineering consultant, spoke to the Board about wetlands and about the noise study. He had been out to the site with a soils scientist and had flagged the wetland areas. Prendergast said he had delineated the wetlands based on criteria from both the Army Corps of Engineers and the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). The data has been submitted to DEC who presumably will come out at some point to verify it. The Army Corps wetlands are more extensive but, according to Prendergast, include areas that are normally dry and could be used for agriculture or for parking cars. He said the revised plan indicates that the area for the track has been moved again to higher ground and now includes a 100-foot buffer zone from the DEC wetland area. It also includes a space for parking 210 cars in an area that formerly was a corn field.
Prendergast had also conducted a noise study with the assistance of a licensed engineer with expertise in sound investigations. A sound meter was set up on a Sunday afternoon, at two locations, one near the Webster Hill Road entrance to the site and another up by a residence on Saddleback Ridge Road. At this time drag racing was going on at the New Lebanon drag strip. Seven dirt bikers were sent out to race around in the area of the proposed Motocross track. Prendergast said he had estimated that the noise level at the first location would be 73 decibels but found that the average hourly rate was only 59 decibels. The dirt bikes, he said, did not add to the noise of the drag strip. He did some mathematical calculations and estimated that with 20 bikes running the noise would be about 63 decibels. Up on Saddleback Ridge Road, the noise averaged 46 decibels with the drag strip running. When the dirt bikes started up there was no increase on the meter.
Prendergast said that his consultant recommended that a berm be installed behind the start line of the Motocross track to reduce starting noise, so that will be added to the plan. Responding to a question from Board Chairman Roland Barth, he said additional berms and sound absorbing landscaping could be installed as needed.
Lewis Oliver, attorney for the neighboring residents, was not happy. He did not feel that running six bikes around the field was a realistic test of actual track operation with 20 to 30 dirt bikes racing, and he questioned the accuracy of Prendergast’s mathematical extrapolations. Also, if the plan calls for only 20 bikes racing at a time, he argued that that number should be a condition of any permit. He was not satisfied with only two locations for noise testing but, rather, insisted that noise should be measured at a number of different locations and in different directions. Moreover, he pointed out that the test on Saddleback Ridge Road was done on the side of a three-story house away from the source of the noise. And why, he wondered, was the baseline for comparison not a quiet, daytime suburban residential situation.
Oliver objected to two items in the revised plan that had not been seen before, ATV racing and racing on Tuesdays. There was nothing in the noise study about ATV engines, which Oliver thought might be even noisier than dirt bikes. There was nothing on snowmobiles in the plan but would that also be added at some point? And racing on Tuesday nights, he said, was something totally new. Now residents would have to put up with Motocross or track noise on Tuesdays as well as Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Oliver said the revised plan was inadequate in several ways. The times that races will start are given but nowhere does it say when they will end. The plan says that at a race there could be 300 vehicles with 200 competitors and 600 spectators. Oliver did not see a parking area for 300 vehicles or room for 200 competitors on dirt bikes or ATVs. Concluding that parking would extend into the Town of New Lebanon, Oliver argued that the New Lebanon Zoning Board should be involved in the decisions. He also wanted to know what provisions would be made for public viewing, for vendors and their gasoline generators, for refueling of dirt bikes, for port-a-potties and for protecting the wetlands from pollution from these sources.
Oliver recalled that mention had been made earlier of national events drawing 20,000 people. There is nothing in the plan now about such events, but Oliver wanted assurance – and a condition in any permit – that they would not occur.
Oliver also thought it very important to have a delineation of wetlands by DEC and argued that federal wetlands are joined to and should be considered part of State wetlands.
A number of neighboring residents spoke up voicing their concerns about wetlands, about adding more noise in the area and how it travels up the Kinderhook Creek like a wind tunnel, agreeing with Oliver about what they perceived as an inadequate and unrealistic noise study, noting the frequent accidents on Route 20 by the New Lebanon track and how that situation would be worsened by bringing out more traffic from Webster Hill Road. Robert Henrickson, Mayor of the Village of East Nassau, spoke of “incredible mission creep” over the years in operation at the New Lebanon track with hours of operation extended significantly. The application before the Stephentown Board, he noted, had changed from its original form with hours and days of operation changed, no race end times specified and now apparently overnight camping. Part of the SEQR process, he said, is to ensure that the application is complete. “If I were in your shoes,” he said, “I would not deem it so in any way, shape or form.”
Francis Roach, Commander’s attorney, said he would like to get Oliver’s objections and concerns in written form from Oliver’s consulting engineer. If that is received soon, he said his team would be able to make appropriate response and present a completed application within ten days. Thus the Board could rule on its completeness at next month’s meeting, at which time Roach said he would call for a public hearing for the following month. Neither the Board nor Oliver appeared to have any problem with that time frame.
