A number of people displaying signs reading “Shady is Not a Dump” and other slogans gathered on Woodstock’s village green Sunday afternoon, April 23 to call for action.
Despite increased calls to have all the material removed, Woodstock town supervisor Bill McKenna continues to defend his handling of the cleanup of fill laden with illegal construction debris at 10 Church Road in Shady.
Property owner Vincent Conigliaro’s wife Gina had ordered the fill for a landscaping project from contractor Joseph Karolys, who faces manslaughter charges for the death of David “Mickey” Myer, and has also been charged by state officials with hauling and accepting construction and demolition debris from the New York City metropolitan area.
McKenna signed off on a plan by Vincent Conigliaro to have a contractor sift through the fill, remove the construction debris, transport it to a licensed facility, and then spread the rest of it on the side of the property facing away from neighbors. DEC regional enforcement engineer David Pollock called it a reasonable plan, according to McKenna’s recollection of a phone conversation about six weeks ago.
The DEC found no state violations.
“The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation [DEC] personnel have inspected the property at 10 Church Road in Woodstock on several occasions over the past few years, and have not observed evidence of a violation of the Environmental Conservation Law over DEC’s regulations,” said DEC Region 3 director Kelly Turturro on April 20 in response to an email from councilmember and supervisor candidate Bennet Ratcliff.
“We seek immediate help, Ratcliff said in his email to Turturro and to Lem Srolovic, environmental bureau chief at the state attorney general’s office. “Construction trucks are on the 10 Church Road property under a town permit that misrepresents the work as ‘dirt removal and redistribution.’ The town supervisor reviewed and signed off on this permit, despite his knowing that the material was hazardous.”
Ratcliff contended that it had been established in court that the material was hazardous construction and demolition debris from Karolys’ yard on Route 212. “It will be dumped who knows where,” he said.
Under DEC regulations, Turturro wrote, up to 5000 cubic yards of “recognizable, uncontaminated concrete or concrete products, asphalt pavement, brick, glass, rock and general construction and demolition activities” may be accepted for disposal without a permit.
Further, she wrote, “DEC does not have any evidence that hazardous waste is present at the site.”
McKenna challenged Ratcliff’s assertions, saying the exact source of the material was not known and was never disclosed in court. He said the material will likely go to a licensed facility in Eddyville known locally as Duke’s Pit.
“From my perspective, the town is doing what they can do. Were Vince not to follow through with the cleanup plan, which he’s up there as he started yesterday [April 20], the town would then have the ability to go back to court and get permission from the court to effect a cleanup,” McKenna said. “And our law says that we can’t just go on somebody .… Imagine me showing up at your house and starting to pick up garbage around your house and then send you a bill. You can’t do it. There’s a legal mechanism.”
McKenna said the town can take over the cleanup if Conigliaro doesn’t complete the task.
He cited an example, “There was a house that burned down. It was danger to the residents, and after the appropriate time period, and with the appropriate channels, we got the legal right to go in and clean it up and charge them back on their taxes, which is what we could do in this case, if Vince fails to carry through,” he said. “Right now, he’s been moving for slow. I’m not gonna lie, it’s slow. But he did get the samples last year when he asked him to. He came up with a plan, and he said, as soon as spring comes, I’ll be in there. It’s happening.”
But neighbor Frank Eighmey, who looks at the eyesore of fallen debris in his Reynolds Lane back yard, said the permit issued by the building department to sift through the fill and remove debris was in violation of the town’s new fill law, which was inspired by this incident.
“It does not permit on-site processing, sorting or crushing,” Eighmey said at the April 18 meeting of the town board. “It requires an engineer stamp. It requires to include a quantity of material. The plan that was proposed to you is not a plan. It looks more like a cartoon. Think about that, because this should be under your new law that you put in place to protect us.”
McKenna said the fill law was not retroactive. It did not prohibit activity that took place before it was passed. He appointed councilmember Laura Ricci to work with the local environmental commission.
Ratcliff insists McKenna is getting in the way of cleanup progress. “Bill’s outburst about calling the police and referring to the crowd as a bunch of effing babies is just retaliation for the work that the WEC is doing, and that Alex [Bolotow] has been doing,” he said. McKenna had yelled at the audience heckling him as he announced he was suspending his reelection campaign.
“And I think he should listen to what people are asking and clean up the all of the fill at 10 Church Road,” Ratcliff continued. “There’s only one thing that’s standing in the way of that, and that’s supervisor Bill McKenna. I think that people are beginning to understand that we don’t need contaminated material over the unconsolidated aquifer that leads to our municipal water supply. There’s a way to do it, and it is not to allow the polluter to create a plan of sifting and sorting.”
McKenna has disputed claims the town water supply is in any danger.
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