If you’re a longtime resident of New Paltz or Rosendale, you know all about Springtown Road being the “back way” to get between the two towns when traffic is heavy on State Route 32. Springtown (a/k/a County Route 7) being an officially designated scenic byway, with the Wallkill River on the east side and an unfolding panorama of Sky Top, Bonticou Crag and Guyot’s Hill on the west, you might take it sometimes just to enjoy the scenery. It winds more than 32 and takes a little longer, but it’s peaceful, rural and lovely, and especially popular with cyclists.
People also live along Springtown Road and the small streets that intersect it, of course. It’s home as well to a number of small businesses — many of them agritourism-related, such as Bradley Farm and Coppersea Distilling. North of Dug Road in New Paltz, which connects with Canaan Road, and south of River Road in Tillson, which connects with Route 32, their neighborhood is landlocked. While the floodplain area has a long history of accessibility problems during the spring snowmelt season and late-summer hurricanes, those have eased up thanks to flood-control equipment installed on the Wallkill in recent years.
So, Springtown residents were blindsided when, two days before Memorial Day weekend, they found their lifeline, County Route 7, torn up for repaving, with no advance notice. It was the worst imaginable time for such a massive infrastructure project, since locals and visitors alike use Springtown as an alternative route to the Ulster County Fairgrounds for the Woodstock/New Paltz Art and Crafts Fair, or simply to avoid Route 299 traffic on such a busy tourist weekend.
According to local residents, a lengthy section of Springtown Road, from the Dug Road intersection to approximately the Rosendale town line, had its surface scraped and ground up, beginning on May 24. “The work started the Wednesday before Memorial Day, which is stupid,” reports Harriet Forman Barrett. “They were throwing down gravel — huge stuff — and they didn’t do it right. They tore up the road completely, all the way for four miles, and then left it.”
According to Forman Barrett, the road work continued for only two days, until the Friday of the holiday weekend. Paving did not commence until the following Wednesday. When she asked a road crew member the reason for the long hiatus, she was told that a piece of equipment had broken down.
Forman Barrett’s home lies close to Springtown Road, just north of the intersection with Cragswood Road. She began documenting the stone dust that plagued her property, posting photos on the New Paltz Community Facebook page, including a striking shot of opossum tracks in a deep layer of dust that had settled on her patio. She couldn’t open her windows for more than a week. “There were huge billowing clouds of it,” she tells HV1. “They only watered it the first day.” When she asked the crew supervisor why so little had been done to suppress the dust, he told her, “If we did it regularly, we’d have the taxpayers complaining.”
Forman Barrett notes that she had “just powerwashed my house,” and would certainly not have done so, had she known that this road construction project was on the drawing board for spring 2023. Caroline Paulson, a neighbor who lives on Springtown between Cragswood and Coffey Road and is currently contending with several major health issues, might have been able to plan better in terms of her medical care. She reports that she first became aware of the extent of the problem on Thursday, May 25, upon returning from a trip to a doctor’s office, and immediately began keeping a journal of the progress (or lack thereof) of the project.
“We suddenly hit loose rocks, some the size of my fist, which flew up, hitting my car. There were no warning signs for cars heading south from Rosendale. Slowing down as fast as she could reduced the threat, but the loose rocks were too much for my small car, even at 10 miles per hour. They did not run a compactor until Friday,” Paulson writes.
While her house is set further back from the road than Forman Barrett’s, so that the dust clouds were less of an issue, accessibility for Paulson was crucial. She had to drive to the Tillson Post Office no later than Saturday in order to “mail a package of medical information to specialists in New York City. They had warned me that if they did not get this by Wednesday, they would have to cancel my computer consult in early June.” She began making phone calls to find out how long it would be before the paving was completed, and was unable to get any answers at either the local or county level.
“No one had any advance notice of this massive approximately four-mile-long construction job. The local police did not know it was going on. I called the County Highway Department and Jen Metzger’s office. They never called me back. After all, it was the start of a big holiday weekend,” Paulson writes.
Deciding that she had no choice but to drive on the maze of broken-up pavement that Springtown Road had become, she headed south toward New Paltz, only to have the undercarriage of her car get hung up on a gravel pile. “The men helped push and pull my car into the left lane,” she writes. One of the flaggers “told me that an out-of-state company was doing this job and they did not care about anything. He said they were not working on Saturday and they would pave Tuesday.”
Like Paulson, Forman Barrett got no response when she tried to get status reports from County officials. As of presstime, the County Department of Public Works had not returned HV1’s call either. Inquiries to the offices of New Paltz Town Supervisor Neil Bettez and highway superintendent Chris Marx indicated that they too had been taken by surprise by the sudden commencement of roadwork just before the holiday weekend. “Since this is a county road, the town isn’t involved at all,” writes Bettez. “I assume it is taking a long time because they are doing a more extensive project instead of a quick fix, meaning it will last longer (and cost more), but it will also be less likely to fail the next time it floods.”
Paulson points out that Springtown Road was not in bad shape compared to many other roadways, and not in particular need of an overhaul. “There were no cracks, no potholes. Route 32 is far worse.” Both she and Forman Barrett expressed concern that the road, with its new gravel shoulders, will now become less safe for cyclists. Moreover, a repaved surface will encourage motorists to exceed the 45-mile speed limit, says Paulson, noting that there are already frequent collisions on Springtown due to drunken drivers using it to avoid police surveillance on 32.
“The project seems like a punishment and the timing of this has made it so much worse,” Paulson writes. “Why was no one given respectful and considerate notice of this? Why didn’t the local police know about this?… Apparently, some road signs warning of construction were put in place to the south of this job around the time of beginning this, but no warnings were apparent for those of us on the northern side. One week later some paving has begun. Apparently, it will be at least one week more before it is finished.”
As of presstime on June 6, Harriet Forman Barrett reports that the repaving appears to be finally complete, with the first yellow dots being laid down to indicate where the center line will go. But the community’s anger about the lack of any clear communications protocol at the County level seems likely to take longer to resolve.
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