Proposed Development at Winston Farm Threatens the Rural Nature of Our Region
Known for hosting the 25th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival in 1994, the Winston Farm property in Saugerties, New York, dates back to the time of construction of the Ashokan Reservoir. Over the years, the site has been proposed for use as a community college, a casino, a landfill and incinerator and a high-tech business park with none of those plans receiving a welcoming reception from the local community. The latest plan for Winston Farm is headed toward a similar fate.
The Developers, Saugerties Farms, LLC are seeking to create a Planned Development District (PPD) that would rezone the 840-acre Winston Farm site, thus allowing a mega-development project. Last week, Saugerties Farms, LLC presented a Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement (DGEIS) that describes their “Sponsor’s Preferred Plan” of 799 housing units with a combination of townhouses and apartments, plus 250,000 square-feet of commercial space, a 150-room boutique hotel, a conference center with an additional 250 hotel rooms, a 5,000-seat enclosed concert venue, a 100-cabin campground, and around 250,000 square-feet of laboratory or light industrial buildings. The DGEIS also addresses potentially larger projects in a “reasonable worst case scenario.”
The community has expressed many concerns about the potential adverse impacts from such a proposal to the quality of life in Saugerties and surrounding towns and villages including Woodstock, Catskill, Palenville and Hunter. Among the concerns are the loss of habitat (Winston Farm is Designated by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Hudson River Estuaries Program as a Significant Biodiversity Area) that would be devastating to the ecosystems, wildlife, and plants of Winston Farm and the surrounding region. Two regionally important large meadows would be impacted, impairing their potential to support rare grasslandbreeding birds and wintering raptors. Clear cutting and fragmentation of forests have farreaching climate impacts, and traffic gridlock on country roads threatens the clean air our region is known for. Potential contamination from stormwater runoff and treated sewage wastewater will empty into the Beaver Kill which feeds into the Kaaterskill Creek, a Class B trout spawning stream that flows through the Village of Catskill and from there into the Hudson River. Winston Farm is on the headlands of the recharge zone for the Beaverkill Aquifer and lies within the Aquifer Protection Overlay District, the last place that one would choose for massive development. Even if the supply of water from one or two large wells near the site is adequate for such intensive development, the DGEIS does not mandate a central water supply. A central wastewater plant is contemplated … but also not required as part of the PPD. There are no provisions for contiguous open space.
The developers promise economic benefits to the local economy, but residents have already articulated the bad trade-offs that could come from vastly increased traffic to the area during concerts for 5,000 people compared with either a more modest development, as allowed under the current zoning, or sale of the site for land conservation and designation as a State Park, an option that has been proposed to the developers but that has been left on the table, as they continue to press ahead with the proposed zoning change.
The Town Board of Saugerties, as lead agency, is now charged with evaluating whether the DGEIS is complete in terms of scope and content, with a 45-day clock ticking. If the Board requires revisions to the document, a shorter time-clock kicks in upon delivery of the next draft. When the Board accepts a version of the DGEIS as ready for public review, New York State’s Environmental Review Act (SEQRA) requires the Board to post a Notice of Completion and to accept public comment on that document; the Board can also hold one or more public hearings to help determine what revisions it will make before issuing a Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement (FGEIS).
The public can participate at this stage both by expressing views on the proposed PPD and DGEIS and by supporting organizations like Beautiful Saugerties and Catskill Mountainkeeper that will be submitting comments to the Town Board about deficiencies in the DGEIS. The community in Saugerties is rallying to protect the beloved Winston Farm site, yet again! For more information watch Catskill Mountiankeeper’s short film What’s at Stake at Winston Farm.
