SAUGERTIES    Veteran quarry developer and 200 angry citizens appear at planning meeting "He sat right here at this table," Bob O'Leary was saying about Gilbert Shott,"and told us he wanted to create a lake and build houses for his family. And all of us around here would have use of the lake. So we figured we could put up with the three to five years he said it would take."
    The tranquil promise to the O'Learys and other neighbors led to the initial clearing of the overgrown quarry site under a corporation Shott created called Bedford Properties.(Clearwater Excavating Corp is another name that has been used.) The site is a knob of rock on the top of the Hooge Berg ridge that runs between Veteran and Mount Airy just behind the Winston Farm in Saugerties.
    Now the other shoe has fallen. Shott's company, Shott Rock Inc., has filed applications to truck 2.8 million yards of stone off the hill behind the O'Leary house, right past their door. The three to five years has grown to 28, the length of time it will take to blast, crush and remove all that rubble.
    The small lake has expanded into"a 22-acre crater" more than 100 feet deep, according to Citizens Action for Residential Environments in Saugerties (CARES), a citizens' group that has formed to fight Gilbet Shott¹s mining application. CARES was out in force this week, first to rally and then to chastise, in a well-organized mobilization of citizens. Almost 80 neighbors got together Monday night at the senior center, led by chairman Pat Fitzsimmons in a review of the issues to date.
    The next night more than 200 filled the same room while the town planning board held an informational meeting on the project. CARES includes a cross-section of community activists, citizens concerned about former issues, some professionals, and newcomers to the agitation scene.
    There were members of a community that felt, like the O'Learys, that they had been duped. And now they felt that the town government was playing right into the hands of the developer. Their warnings last year had not been heeded. Their petition, signed by more than 600, had not been taken seriously. Their efforts to provide information and help had not been acknowledged nor used. And the town was giving away a trump card in causally declining to be lead agency in the environmental review.
    "All along, we¹ve just been asking for a place at the table," said CARES member Brian Donahue. Other CARES activists include Patti Kelly, Susan Puretz, Ed Doyle, Barbara Kaisik, Sonya Sayres, and legal advisor March Gallagher.
    Shott, a Salem, Westchester County resident and large contractor, filed for a mining application with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation two months ago
    The DEC sent out a notice to the town planning board last month, which briefly discussed the issue then. Then the planning board chairman, William Creen, authorized a letter to the DEC stating that the town had no interest in becoming lead agency in the environmental review of the mining application. In defense of that letter, he initially claimed that DEC had simply told the town that the state would take the lead. The citizens were shocked. Many of them felt the DEC was notorious for rubber-stamping quarrying applications. Donahue said that when he twice sought information on the DEC application at the regional office in New Paltz, he was told no application had been filed ­ even though he had the file number. Thirty-five documents in the file were not provided to the public when the file was released, based on provisions in state law protecting intra-agency documents from scrutiny.
    Now, the citizens felt, the town had tossed away its first real opportunity to fight this project, by becoming lead agency. As a former DEC attorney explained Tuesday night, that would likely be a losing fight and the DEC would ultimately be conducting the mining review.
    But that wasn¹t the point to these concerned citizens. Pat Fitzsimmons said on Monday it was "unknown" of the lead agency status was significant. ("It's a very large web and it's got a lot of spiders in it," he said.) The point was to send a message to the state government as well. Saugerties wasn't a sleepy-eyed community any more. The intrusion of this potentially massive removal of stone through a residential area would not be tolerated. The town government seemed to lack gumption.
    The lead-agency issue rippled among the town planning board members as well. Former chairman Joe Marino and Creen engaged in a testy exchange at the outset over the working of the minutes from the June meeting. Marino asserted that the DEC could not unilaterally take lead agency on the mining review "without input from our board." Creen said he was advised by the town attorney not to challenge the DEC on this. He and William Brandt asserted that the planning board"lacks the resources" to conduct such an environmental review. Finally the chairman agreed to amend the minutes to show that the DEC was "requesting" lead-agency status
    The case was fraying nerves. Sonya Sayres expressed the frustration of CARES in reporting on her efforts to reach out to the planning board and inform it about lead agency and the state environmental quality review process.
    Creen was queried by CARES' legal advisor, March Gallagher, about the procedures used by the planners in calling the informational meeting. Creen at first asserted that it did not represent a "pre-submission conference" between the planners and the applicant, and then said it did. Gallagher had filed papers with the zoning board of appeals seeking a stay of the process on the grounds that proper procedure was not followed by the planning board.
    Building inspector Paul Andreassen had forced Shott to end the trucking of rubble last year. But some felt the town and the state initially acted lackadaisical. More than just rubble was removed, neighbors said; part of the ledge is also gone.
    Assertions were made that part of a wetlands was destroyed. The DEC had had top order Shott to remove a culvert he had installed that further modified water drainage and the potential wetlands. In reviewing engineering drawings and maps of the work undertaken, some adjoining property owners now asserted that their own lands had been violated.
    Andreassen's office was laden with requests for copies of the Shott Rock Inc. application, even at 25 cents a page. Planning board resources were also taxed. The board¹s professional consultant, Shuster Associates, had to prepare a hasty summary of the project following the June meeting using materials filled by Shott¹s attorney, Michael Moricello. Miles Putnam, the Shuster consultant, said some of the documentation claimed by Moricello wasn¹t there. Although Putnam said the planning board "is in a position to provide meaningful input" in the mining application review process, Donahue scored the report for not addressing objectionable issues more specifically.
     The neighborhood was not only awake, but had come loaded for bear as well. There were six attorneys in the room at the meeting of the planning board. "You ought to save your money, pack your bags and go home," Michael Catalinotto told the Shott Rock Inc. presenters, to the crowd¹s delight.
    Gilbert Shott was also there, along with Moriello, a geologist and an engineer from Earth Tech, an Albany engineering firm. Richard Praetorius was with them as a local engineer. They had a presentation to make. Creen said the event was an informational meeting in which questions would not be taken from the general public. As the proceedings went on, however, he allowed the citizens to query the experts.
    In his opening, Moriello claimed the area in question had been a bluestone quarry for more than 100 years. Putnam stated in the Shuster Associates report that Moriello had provided documentation to that effect, but added later that Moriello asserted he had the documents, but did not provide them.
    That issue became critical to some of the lawyers. The town zoning board allows for the resumption of a pre-existing use within five years of its lapsing. But no one living in the room that night could recall when any stone had been taken off that hill ­ except for Shott's work last year.
    In fact, the Hooge Berg in this area of Saugerties was the first land in Ulster County to be mined for bluestone. It was discovered here in 1831 by Silas Brainerd, a dam-builder for Henry Barclay, the founder of the village industries. Eventually more than a million dollars in stone was shipped from Saugerties¹ docks each year throughout much of the 19th century. By the 1890's the hill was a dying beehive, notable as a route from Blue Mountain (through the future Winston Farm into the village) that enabled the traveler to avoid the toll roads. A local family whose grandfather had been the last superintendent said quarrying of the stone had ended on that ridge before 1920.
    Since then a slow accretion of residences has developed, both from north and south. The arrival of the Grant D. Morse Elementary School in Blue Mountain in the 1960's promoted the growth of a development west of the mine site. Lodge Road kept expanding south until it was now within 1000 feet of the area to be blasted. To the south, both the old Solway House road and Morse Road were slowly encroaching into the area. There were more than 20 houses in the Solway area alone.
    The O'Learys live at the last house on Morse Road. The narrowness of the road and the way it curves into the hill bring the residences into visual prominence, since most are located close to the pavement. The town put a new coat of blacktop on the dead-end road recently, but did not expand it. O'Leary said the width is 20 feet, which he felt was not compatible with the number of trucks anticipated.
   He and CARES spokespersons contended that Shott's claim to a 50-foot right-of-way, instead of 20 feet is wrong. No deeds or right-of-way descriptions were filed with the building inspector in the applicant¹s package.
   Some details were provided by Gilbert Shott's advisors on Tuesday night. Geologist Rich Heisert said the 100,000 tons of rock expected to be taken out each year amounted to between nine and 45 trucks a day, or between 18 and 90 trips past the O'Leary house. Still, Heisert said this was "a relatively small" mining project, comparing it with the cement plant at Ravena, which he said drew seven million tons a year. He commented how none of the mining associated with the cement plant is visible from any highway.
     The bluestone excision in Veteran would create a 260-foot hole in the ridge. Shott's advisors anticipated this would be filled with water, ultimately creating a lake. But in the intervening years the operation would need to divert up to 128,000 gallons into a small tributary of the Beaverkill that ran behind Old Route 212. Ken Gelting, another Earth Tech official, said the area experiences 36 inches of rainfall a year.
     The town will become an "involved party" in the DEC review of the mining application. Citizens in the area, and other agencies, may also participate, as involved or interested parties.
    Shott Rock Inc. has filed an environmental assessment form with the DEC application. It expects the project to be treated as a "type 1" action, which requires the most detailed level of review. Meanwhile, the town has its own review process to undertake if the mining application is approved. The site is in an R-2 zone (residential), where quarrying is allowed under a special use permit. In his opening remarks, Shott's attorney, Moriello, asserted that the quarry was permitted because it would be "in harmony" with the zoning law. Opponents to the proposal had a different reading of the zoning law.
    They asserted that special-use permits were only for "non-intensive" uses that would not disrupt the zone. There was also the five-year window of opportunity to maintain a claim of a pre-existing use. Since there had not been mining at the location in more than 80 years, they argued, it could not be claimed as pre-existing.
    Hundreds of people remained asking questions well past 10 p.m. on Tuesday. Several town board members, including town supervisor Greg Helsmoortel, were also on hand.
The evening had the added advantage of providing a virtual lesson in local governance as the planning board conducted several minor subdivision hearings that the audience got to experience. A woman who wanted to subdivide two acres out of her 80 along 300 feet of road frontage quickly pointed out that she was only doing some real estate housekeeping.
    "I'm not mining bluestone," she said, to the crowd's hurrah.

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