HEARING THIS WEEK ON THE FUTURE OF NUTTEN HOOK
Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP News
05-09-10 - 2:10 p.m. - A state administrative hearing will be held on Wednesday, May 12, to determine the fate of Ice House Road in Stuyvesant. The hearing, which will be conducted by Chief Administrative Law Judge Peter Loomis, will begin at 9:30 a.m. in the Town Hall, located at 5 Sunset Drive in the Stuyvesant.
Jennifer Post, a spokeswoman for the NYS Department of Transportation, said the purpose of the hearing is to determine “whether the crossing carrying Ferry Road over the CSX tracks should be closed and discontinued, and whether the private rail crossing at Ice House [Road] . . . over the tracks should be declared a public crossing.”
The hearing comes at a time when DOT is attempting to advance a project that would ultimately allow trains to travel faster along the corridor. The project is the latest in a decades-long effort to provide high-speed rail between New York City and Albany.
The threatened closing of the Ferry Road rail crossing has raised fears in the community that river access at the end of the road would be blocked and property owners along the road would be left without access to their property because of opposition by the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation to creating a connector road between Ferry and Ice House roads. DEC's opposition to a connector road is based on the road’s impact on area wetlands. |
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John Hutchinson, who owns a historic house on Ferry Road, obtained, through Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests, a 1999 memo from then-DEC Region 4 Director Steve Schassler that stated a connector road would be feasible and “any wetlands impacted by the connector can be mitigated off-site as originally discussed.”
Town residents and the State have been discussing for nearly two decades what to do with Ferry and Ice House roads. Stuyvesant residents have sought improved river access, while DOT officials have sought to limit use of—or eliminate altogether—the “at-grade” railroad crossings that are parallel to Route 9J when vehicles seek to enter the roads. A plan to close Ferry Road and build the connector road was the subject of a memorandum of understanding reached between the State and the Town of Stuyvesant in 1995, but that agreement fell apart because of DEC concerns about building a connector road through a designated wetland. The proposal would have seen less than one acre of wetlands disturbed and the disturbance of those wetlands would have been mitigated by the creation of an acre of wetlands elsewhere, Town Supervisor Valeria Bertram told ccSCOOP recently. Officials who attending an unannounced meeting between state and town officials in March reported that DEC officials had stated that “a connector road won’t be built because of the wetlands.”
The issue has drawn the attention of elected officials, including Assemblyman Tim Gordon (I-108th District), who wrote a letter last month to the DOT stating “any plan to modify the Ferry Road . . . rail crossing must ensure continued public access to the dwellings of Ferry Road as well as its natural areas that belong to all of the people of New York State.”
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