Based on those documents, it appears that “materially false” statements were made to get Chestnut Ridge’s approval, the board said, and the project may cause significantly adverse impacts to the water supply, wastewater treatment, traffic, government services and schools.
The new Bloomingburg village board is seeking candidates for a reconstituted village planning board, but until it is formed, the town has jurisdiction.
The developers had not received notice of the hearing by Wednesday evening, but spokesman Michael Fragin said the town appears to “have once again chosen the path of confrontation and litigation in a discriminatory effort to target Bloomingburg’s Hasidic community.”
Posted May. 7, 2016 at 3:15 PM
Updated May 7, 2016 at 5:34 PM
WOODBURY — Kiryas Joel has resumed construction of its pipeline to the Catskill Aqueduct, a project now entering its fourth year and less than halfway to completion.
Workers are burying giant water transmission mains under Route 32 to finish the first half of the planned pipeline, which will extend from Kiryas Joel to a new well beside Route 32 in the Mountainville section of Cornwall. The village plans to connect that well to its pipe as an interim supply and a future backup for aqueduct water, although two lawsuits are pending that challenge the state permit for the well.
Kiryas Joel is also preparing to build a chlorination plant and a pump station at separate locations in Woodbury, both on properties that Kiryas Joel owns. The Woodbury Planning Board, which is reviewing plans for the treatment plant on Seven Springs Road and pump station on Ridge Road, fielded audience questions about both projects last month and held formal public hearings on them Wednesday night.
Village officials had hoped to complete the first project phase and begin drawing water from Mountainville this year. But that work, which includes a second pump station on the Mountainville property, is now expected to take until June 2017 to finish, according to a contract the Times Herald-Record obtained under the state Freedom of Information Law.
Project costs continue to rise. Documents provided on Thursday by the state Environmental Facilities Corp., which has lent Kiryas Joel the funding for the project, suggest expenses have jumped by another $5.5 million, putting the total expected cost at around $56.5 million. The estimate had ballooned to $51 million as of last August from $29 million less than three years earlier.
The $1 million chlorination plant to be built in Woodbury is strictly for the Mountainville well water and is different than the plant the village must later build to filter New York City’s aqueduct water. Don Nichol, Kiryas Joel’s attorney, said last week that village officials had not decided yet whether to build the filtration plant near the aqueduct tap in New Windsor or closer to Kiryas Joel. The village’s consultants have estimated that facility will cost roughly $6 million.
Kiryas Joel is financing the first phase with a $27.9 million loan from the state Environmental Facilities Corp. and has requested $23.7 million more for the second phase, which includes more than six additional miles of pipeline and the filtration plant. It also has applied to the EFC for a $6.5 million loan to connect wells from the Country Crossing development in Woodbury to Kiryas Joel’s water system as another source.
A consultant’s report commissioned last year by Orange County indicated that Kiryas Joel’s average daily water use will outstrip the village’s current water supply by 2020 if its population continued to grow at the same rapid rate.
The Mountainville well is near the midpoint of the 13.5-mile pipeline the village plans to build to tap New York City’s aqueduct in New Windsor. The DEC gave Kiryas Joel permission in October to pump 612,000 gallons per day from that well. Groups of municipalities and nonprofits each sued to overturn the decision, arguing the DEC and Kiryas Joel didn’t study closely enough the potential impact that volume of water would have on other wells and the Woodbury and Moodna creeks. Both lawsuits are pending in state Supreme Court in Albany.
The area of Route 32 on which the pipeline construction is occurring has been narrowed to a single lane, with temporary traffic signals on either end. A state Department of Transportation spokeswoman said last week that the lane closure began in April and is expected to continue into the summer.
Kiryas Joel pipeline project may be linked to land annexation
Construction fees would help fund $45M water plan
Opponents of Kiryas Joel’s planned connection to the Catskill Aqueduct have long feared that tapping New York City’s vast water supply would fuel continued growth in the densely populated village and enable it to widen its borders.
Kiryas Joel has the necessary construction permits for the pipeline itself, but lacks the necessary permits and approvals to remove water from the aquifer. Nevertheless, Kiryas Joel is building the pipeline, apparently convinced it will eventually get those permissions, either through the normal approval process or by horse-trading for them with politicians who rely on Satmar’s bloc vote. Observers also expect Kiryas Joel and Satmar officials will continue to brand opponents of their pipeline antisemites.
WOODBURY — A state appeals court has upheld the Village of Woodbury’s Comprehensive Plan and zoning laws, reversing a 2014 ruling that branded the zoning “exclusionary” for failing to accommodate the high-density housing needs of the Hasidic residents of neighboring Kiryas Joel.
In a decision signed Wednesday, a four-judge Appellate Division panel rejected all three grounds Supreme Court Justice Francis Nicolai had given for invalidating the planning blueprint and two zoning amendments Woodbury approved in 2011. Under their ruling, Kiryas Joel and the affiliated plaintiffs that filed the lawsuit that same year must now return to Supreme Court and prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the plan and land-use laws constitute illegal “exclusionary zoning.”
“It strikes down the notion of affirmative action in accommodating religious sects in zoning,” Dennis Lynch, the South Nyack attorney representing Woodbury, said of the appeals court ruling on Thursday.
Kiryas Joel’s lawyers had argued that zoning for large residential lots prevents Hasidic Jews from “living and freely practicing their religion in Woodbury.” Joining the village as a plaintiff in the case was the land-holding arm of Kiryas Joel’s main congregation, which owns 175 acres in Woodbury.
In addition to the “exclusionary zoning” argument, Nicolai — who retired shortly after rendering his decision in the case — had invalidated Woodbury’s Comprehensive Plan for two technical reasons involving the environmental review and county approval for those documents. The Appellate Division found no merit in either claim and reversed Nicolai on those points as well.
BLOCKBUSTING…..EXPANSIONISM…LAKEWOOD, TOMS RIVER, MONROE-WOODBURY, BLOOMINGBURG
by Lost Messiah, March 16, 2016
This article was sent to us by a FB site, which also cited LostMessiah. We are posting it along with a series of supporting posts on this topic. We find most interesting that this topic is being picked up now worldwide.
Twersky and Teitelbaum: Avoiding Justice by Transcending Time and Space
The most fervent of the Skver and Satmar ultra-Orthodox Hasidic sects hold their leaders in god-like regard. It’s not uncommon for the most fundamentalist members of the cults’ lowest castes to literally eat the crumbs off of their leaders’ plates. It’s as if Marie Antoinette has been reborn into a televangelist’s – one who “cures” paralysis – body; these leaders have their cake and YOU can eat it, too – so long as you submit to a life of celebrated poverty, unashamed illiteracy and absolute dependency on an outside world and government that you undercut and bilk daily.
These leaders, while eschewing pop culture, must’ve seen Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, because their dictatorships are substantively a hybrid of disjointed temporal phenomena (because let’s face it, they certainly didn’t study World History in Avir Yaakov). They rule as if in Soviet Russia in the 1970s. They treat minorities as if they were plantation owners in the 1860s. They are quick to draw false parallels to 1939 in a misguided and disingenuous attempt to liken justifiable criticism against them to the deplorable actions of the Nazis. (And they dress like Polish nobility of the 18th century. No judgements. Live and let live.)
So what does that mean for us? Well, for starters, we’re expected to ignore the values of the United States Constitution and forget the fact we’re in America. Oh, you didn’t get the memo we’re in a theocracy now? At least that’s what bloc leadership would like us to believe. And, unfortunately, that’s how we are being treated.
Their dominion over (mostly) illegal housing in Spring Valley is today’s modern day feudal system. The working class does just that, works!, but at the end of the day, the cash they make goes back into their landlord’s pocket and never makes its way to the IRS. Fire safety be damned, too. It’s no secret bloc leadership has snatched up these homes with the intention of tearing them down and developing similarly unsafe and crowded high density housing. What’s the big deal if a house goes up in flames? It was only a matter of time before the slumlords let it fall beyond disrepair like Avon Gardens.
As for everyone outside of Spring Valley – you’re not off the bloc’s hook, either. Infinitely ballooning Medicaid and government subsidies programs are bleeding the County dry. Not to mention dubiously skyrocketing school budget allocations for “non public school services.” Regents exams and high school diplomas be damned!
And then we have arguably the more salient issue of the moment: blockbusting. In perhaps the best real life example of biting the hand that feeds you, bloc leadership and developers want YOU – the tax base, supporting the theocracy – to move. Belligerent agents like Naomi Steicher admittedly “do everything” they can to get homeowners to sell.
Which is kind of confusing. Do you want us here, supporting “Medicaid Villages,” or are the anti-Zionist Hasidic sects all of a sudden kibbutzniks and plan on creating a self-sustaining society for themselves and thus want us out?
Seems they’re in a bit of a Catch-22.
Even the Daily Mail from the UK is reporting on blockbusting!
This follows Bloomberg News’s reporting on the same issue earlier yesterday.
LostMessiah.com has also picked up our viral post (50,000 people reached and counting) from yesterday for that article click, here.
The blockbusting that is plaguing our region is all over the wires. This is an issue no one can ignore! We need to keep the pressure on, turn up the noise and TAKE BACK OUR NEIGHBORHOODS!
LOSTMESSIAH 