Oct. 6, 2006

Dear Commissioner Sheehan: You may recall that my neighbor Patti Conboy and I met you in the receiving line at the recent SUNY Cobleskill Roundtable breakfast. We introduced ourselves as members of Save Our Schoharie (SOS), a citizens’ group that formed a little more than a year ago to help foster a sustainable future for the Town of Schoharie.

When fellow-SOS members Tom and Dusty Putnam of Fenimore Assets in Cobleskill had to be out of town on business, they invited Ms. Conboy and me to take their place at the breakfast to hear you speak. We were taken by your eagerness to listen to our group’s cause. Particularly heartening to us was your assertion that DEC’s chief priority is the preservation of the state’s farmlands, parklands, scenic vistas, and quality communities. Also encouraging was your assurance that DEC’s hands are not entirely tied when it comes to finding a balance between the permitting of mining and the aforementioned protection.

First, some quick background. Our group materialized in the face of news that Cobleskill Stone Products (CSP) was attempting to permit (through DEC) 67 acres of land zoned agricultural and residential along the easternmost mountainside rimming the village. To those of us who live in Schoharie, CSP’s current quarry presents issues (blasting, stone dust, truck traffic, noise, landscape destruction, etc.) with which we are continuously forced to cope. SOS members are neither anti-business nor oblivious to NY State’s need for stone product. In fact, we are largely tolerant people. However, the thought of any quarry expanding deeper into our village’s perimeter, further deteriorating the quality of life, is simply unconscionable to the large majority of residents.

We organized to insure that our town fathers comprehended that the citizenry was unwilling to surrender any more of its immediate environment to quarrying. Our concern had an historical basis. In 1994, our town board had quietly okayed CSP’s tripling in size a relatively small quarry that had existed at the edge of the village for many years before CSP purchased it in 1984. For whatever reason, most townspeople were unaware of that expansion until it was a done deal, and the school’s playing fields became next door neighbors to the various undesirable side effects that a quarry produces.

To our town’s credit, in 2005 the board enacted a Land Use Law, based on the adopted town/village comprehensive plan and nine years of work on updated zoning regulations. The law prohibits mining on land other than that currently zoned for it. Of course, CSP has filed the obligatory Article 78 in an attempt to overturn the law. Meanwhile, the permitting process with DEC proceeds. CSP is apparently banking on its financial superiority to outlast and out-maneuver the Town of Schoharie. It considers SOS’s opposition to its DEIS to be a mere nuisance that ultimately will carry little weight with DEC. Upon hearing you speak, I feel more confident that they are wrong.

Commissioner Sheehan, I invite you to visit our home in Schoharie on any given weekday. From as early as 5:00AM, in any village yard, you will hear the echoing of crushers from both Carver and CSP, as they pulverize stone. You will see, hear and smell that our Main Street has become a virtual two-way noise and dust parade route for those extended “Flowboys” and stone and blacktop trucks of every description. From 6:00AM until 6:00 PM, this has become the character of our village, sandwiched as it now is between CSP on the north side and the ever-expanding Carver Stone on the Town of Middleburgh ridgeline to our immediate south. While these two businesses fight for competitive edge, their deep pockets find them quietly trying to acquire land from any farmer who cannot resist the lure of short term wealth. Our only hope to prevent the steady depletion of our landscape and way of life is the sane oversight of our town board and conscientious action from DEC.

You spoke briefly to Ms. Conboy and me of DEC’s somewhat contradictory dual mandates of having to simultaneously preserve the sanctity of the environment and enable mines to expand their operations. It would strike me that, at the very least, mines might be developed in regions that have the least possible deleterious effects on any community. You are familiar with Schoharie County. In its vast expanse, it has perhaps ten villages or towns of any size. To situate a quarry in the midst of any of these, let alone the third most densely populated area (indeed the county seat and northeastern-most gateway) of that largely unpopulated county, may make monetary and logistical sense to the quarry, but it is devoid of fiscal, ethical, logical or aesthetic considerations when it comes to the community. Spend several days as our guest, then tell me what you think of CSP’s current “mitigation operations.” Again, we are not unreasonable people. If the two quarries that now sandwich us merely compromised our village’s complexion, we would tolerate them. Truly, they already dominate it.

I have talked with the owner of CSP on several occasions. With no hint of humor, he speaks of seeing no difference, upon entering the village of Schoharie, between Terrace Mountain’s natural escarpment to the right and his operation’s extraction of mountainside to the left. He refers to the expansion of his quarry as his “natural right.” He will not discuss the unreasonableness of his determination to mine ever-deeper into our immediate landscape. He makes conspicuous assorted civic donations while his already expanding quarry carves up the land that drew most of us to choose Schoharie as a place to live.

In listening to your talk at SUNY Cobleskill, I detected a person sincerely committed to the principles SOS is fighting for in the Town of Schoharie. My purpose in writing is to invite you to use Schoharie as a partner and an object case of a locality that wishes to work in cooperation with DEC’s priority of preserving land as a resource; our farmland, parklands (Historic Lasell Park and its Becker’s Cave would be affected by the proposed expansion) and scenic vistas. As you would see in a visit, Schoharie has already sacrificed deeply to accommodate mining. We don’t wish to surrender any further the remaining beauty that we cherish or to see our precious village converted to an even larger industrial zone.

In her speech prior to introducing you, Acting SUNY Cobleskill President Anne Meyers, sounding the trumpet for sustainability, concluded: "We must leave enough to enable our children to enjoy what we have enjoyed in our lifetimes." The citizenry of Schoharie couldn't agree more.

Thank you for your time and interest.

Most sincerely,

Tom Smith