Local News

by Kieron Kramer

The five Grafton Planning Board members did their duty showing up for the Board meeting on Monday night even though there was nothing on the agenda. The meeting started three minutes late because, as one Board  member, who will remain unnamed, put it, the secretary is “tardy.” Before the meeting, the Board members chit-chatted about various issues – like whether it would snow this week. Tardy or not, the secretary, the indomitable Jessica Crandall, arrived and the meeting began. It was adjourned one minute after the Pledge of Allegiance. It only took the Board 20 seconds to read the minutes of the last meeting and approve them since nothing happened last month either. One would expect some action at the April meeting of the Planning Board – a site plan review, an informal discussion about a subdivision – since planning ahead for spring and summer projects usually begins now. Perhaps the public hasn’t recovered from the long, harsh winter, and thoughts have not yet turned to spring.

The site plan review for the upgrade of the antenna on the AT&T tower at 38 Radio Tower Way was tentatively on the agenda. Radio Tower Way runs off of Snyder Road. AT&T wants to place three new antennas on the tower to upgrade the signal to 4G LTE. For the third month in a row the attorney for AT&T informed Planning Board Chairman Tom Withcuskey that the application is still not ready. The site plan review is again being postponed, until the next Planning Board meeting on May 19.

One bit of news that Withcuskey did announce is that the NYS DEC has responded to Grafton’s request to be the lead agency in the environmental review process for the change of use at the R.J. Valente mine on Route 2 near the Brunswick Town line. The DEC has named itself as lead agency. This is not a surprise to those who follow the mining of greywacke on the Rensselaer Plateau. The State agency is interested in promoting operations that mine greywacke because greywacke is used as an important underlayment in road construction across the State. Greywacke, a resistant sandstone, comprises much of the bedrock of the 105,000 acres of the forested Rensselaer plateau. (See http://rensselaerplateau.org/RensselaerPlateau/History.aspx for a discussion of greywacke on the plateau.) It is one of the main products of the R.J. Valente mine in Grafton.

Withcuskey read the decision from the DEC before this meeting and said that the decision gives Grafton a large say in the scoping of the project. He is pleased by this. Once the DEC finishes its environmental review – which Withcuskey described as a stack of documents a foot high – the Planning Board will begin the site plan review, if R.J. Valente applies for one, which will include a scoping meeting in which the public can respond to the environmental impact statement prepared by the DEC. This will be followed by a public hearing.

The original mining permit issued by the Grafton Planning Board in April of 1996 had a number of stipulations – some of which have been belatedly met and others not, according to Withcuskey. Stipulations included base line water testing, that blasting would be conducted under State regulations, that mining activities would be coordinated with school bus schedules and only operate during certain agreed upon hours, that quarry inspections would be allowed and that 500 tons of processed material and $2,500 each year for ten years would be provided to the Town. When the current Planning Board considers the new site plan review after the hearings it may decide to approve the site plan contingent on all of the previous stipulations being met, which Withcuskey said were court ordered, and it may require more stipulations – the most important to the Board being keeping Route 2 clear of dust and stone that could cause an accident.