Somers residents speak out against Granite Pointe project

SOMERS, N.Y. - A determined band of citizen environmentalists is once again demanding that the Somers Town Board take action to protect the Amawalk Reservoir.

Among the half dozen passionate speakers at the board’s July 10 meeting were Somers residents Fred Higham and David Ouimette.

The object of their righteous indignation was Granite Pointe, a proposed 23-lot luxury home subdivision on 28.8 acres off Route 118 (Tomahawk Street) and adjacent to the reservoir.

Part of the Croton Watershed, the reservoir supplies drinking water to folks in New York City as well as Somers (4,000) and Yorktown (36,000) through the Northern Westchester Joint Waterworks.

Longtime project opponents such as Marc Houslanger are afraid that the reservoir would be threatened by leakage from the developments’ septic systems, chemicals used on its lawns, or runoff from its impervious surfaces.

After parts of the site were found to have been contaminated by lead from a now-defunct shooting range, the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) stepped in to oversee its cleanup.

Higham told the board that just before his wife, Linda, died of cancer last year, she looked him “straight in the eyes” and said: “Fred, keep fighting to protect Granite Pointe and the Amawalk Reservoir. I know how much that place means to you and how much you love it.”

Intently scanning the faces of board members, he recalled being thunderstruck by a benediction he’d heard in church, part of which went: “May God grant you the grace to never sell yourselves short.”

Since the early days of what’s now been a decades-long process, the town Planning Board has acted as lead agency, not the Town Board.

However, project foes allege that the Planning Board’s review of the environmental impact statements wasn’t as rigorous as it could have been during the initial stages and that it didn’t engage the public as much as it could have.

They’ve repeatedly asked the Town Board to take the helm.

Town Attorney Roland Baroni clarified Thursday that the Town Board “cannot be a lead agency on an application that doesn’t require its approvals.”

The Planning Board had issued a “positive declaration” that the project could have adverse environmental impacts.

After assuming lead agency status, it held public hearings and required not only draft and final environmental impact statements, but, unusually, a “supplemental” one as well, before issuing findings, he said.

All these things were done “in lock step” with the DEC and the DEP, Baroni explained adding: “The approvals are in place. What has held up the development is the remediation being overseen by the DEC.”

Since the environmental review was closed by the Planning Board, the Town Board has “no play in any of this at this junction,” he asserted, telling the speakers that they had to “accept these facts” because “they’re in the record.”

Baroni also pointed out that both the DEC and the DEP had had the “option” of being the lead agency but they both “deferred to the Planning Board as they often do.”

Opponents pointed out that in 1990, all land within 500 feet of the Amawalk Reservoir shoreline boundary was designated as a “Critical Environmental Area.”

CEAs are characterized by features that benefit or threaten human health, have exceptional or unique natural settings, or have inherent ecological sensitivity to any physical disturbance.

Looking board members in the eyes, Higham told them: “In your heart of hearts you all must know that building any kind of housing development at Granite Pointe is wrong on so many levels, especially on a moral basis.”

Talking about the need to maintain “faith” in local leadership, Ouimette reminded members of the Town Board that they are the environment’s “final guardians.”

“No one ever regrets preserving clean water. No one ever loses sleep because they protected something sacred,” he said, asking them to “Make the hard choice. Make the right choice.”

Shaun Manning of Somers reminded the town that in 2023 it had adopted a resolution formally backing the philosophy behind 30X30, a global movement that aims to protect 30 percent of terrestrial and marine habitat by 2030.

The initiative became official U.S. policy in 2021.

(Somers has protected – so far – 5,843, or 28.3 percent, of its 20,583 acres.)

Manning asserted that the “rescue and protection” of Granite Pointe should be part of that commitment and if it isn’t, the town should let the “public know why.”

Former longtime Somers resident Julia Rellou, who describes herself as a “humanist and environmentalist,” demanded that the town correct the “moral injury” she claimed had been inflicted on the public over the past two decades by squashing the Granite Pointe project.

Gesturing dramatically toward the old statue of Old Bet, the town’s iconic pachyderm now on display a few feet away, she told the board that “the real elephant in the room” was its “willingness or unwillingness to correct errors of the past” by taking over as lead agency from the Planning Board.

Also putting in an appearance were George Klein and Sarah Wilson of the Sierra Club’s Lower Hudson Group. Wilson is also a member of Yorktown's Climate Smart Communities Task Force.

Klein claimed that former Somers Supervisor Mary Beth Murphy had assured the public in 2008 that a “public acquisition consortium” would be formed as soon as the remediation work was done.

(The Westchester Land Trust had been involved in early efforts to protect Granite Pointe, but it ultimately did not take title to the land due to concerns about the lead contamination.)

Noting that the site’s fate will have impacts outside of Somers’s borders, he urged the board to focus on “fulfilling Supervisor Murphy’s pledge.”

TROUBLED HISTORY

To put things in perspective, the project was first granted preliminary site plan approval in 1990 based on an Environmental Impact Statement.

Before it got the final go-ahead from the Planning Board, however, tests found that certain areas of the site had been contaminated by lead from a shooting range that had operated there between 1938 and 1968.

(Other contaminants such as arsenic, zinc, and manganese were also found.)

Concerns were raised about the potential impacts on human health and wildlife, particularly waterfowl.

New York City got into the act because of the proximity of the proposed development’s septic systems to its drinking water supply.

After those results were confirmed in 2004, the board took back that final approval and things reverted to the preliminary approval stage in order to give the applicant time to prepare a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement.

Among the actions required for final approval were permits for tree removal, stormwater and erosion/sediment controls, approval from the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which owns the reservoir; and, most importantly, approval from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

According to DEC spokesman John J. Salka III, the agency is “performing a comprehensive cleanup of the Granite Pointe Subdivision site (DEC Site no. 360107) under the State’s Superfund (SSF) program to ensure full protection of public health and the environment.”

(Cost estimates have ranged from $8 million to $12 million.)

The DEC completed the site’s cleanup in June 2024 “to unrestricted use standards,” Salka said.

The “restoration component” of the project – establishing vegetative growth – was subject to a “one-year warranty period after cleanup completion,” he said, adding that the completion of those activities have “no impact on the owner’s right to sell or otherwise transfer stake in the property.”

(The owner is John Harkins, of Katonah-based Suelain Realty Inc. Neither he nor project engineer Tim Allen of Bibbo Associates in Somers could be reached for comment by press time.)

The DEC, the state Department of Health (DOH), and the city’s DEP are reviewing the report.

After that’s complete, it will be posted on DECinfo Locator at https://extapps.dec.ny.gov/data/DecDocs/360107/.

Consideration for reclassification of the site will begin after the engineering report has been finalized.

If it’s reclassified to “Class C,” that means that the DEC and DOH have determined that it “no longer poses a threat to human health or the environment," he said.