Town hashes out details of landfill maintenance agreement

NORTH EAST — The Town Board recently discussed its maintenance agreement regarding the now defunct municipal landfill. The Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) is now requiring that a deed restriction be placed on that parcel so it would restrict any activity on the landfill cap itself. However, the town wants to specify that it could potentially opt to use other portions of the property not associated with the cap. For instance, in the past there have been talks about using the landfill as a transfer station.Town Engineer Ray Jurkowski was at the Town Board’s business meeting on Thursday, March 8. He spoke about the landfill maintenance agreement, and also survey mapping, that will be required by the DEC.“In reviewing the DEC requirements with respect to the deed restriction, and also survey mapping, they’re very strict with respect to those,” he said. “The map needs to be generated in a site management plan and also has to be prepared and submitted with restrictions as well.”Jurkowski said the DEC wants to make sure the town is “moving along” and that it’s satisfied with the steps the town is taking. “We indicated we anticipate it will take about six to seven weeks from the time the Town Board gives us approval that a formal submission will be made to them,” Jurkowski said. “We’re working with [Attorney to the Town] Warren Replansky as far as the actual language of the easements and the conditions and so forth.”The engineer added that on March 7, 2012, he sent a letter to the town outlining the proposal for performing three basic tasks: drafting the deed restriction language for the easements; completing and filing the survey mapping; and completing and submitting the site management plan.He added that in speaking with the DEC the town was able to reduce the overall survey area to approximately 16 acres out of nearly 33, and that has to do with the area of the cap, venting and the monitoring.“And that will be tied into the project of the survey, so that will save a little money in not having to do the entire area,” he said.Replansky asked if the survey will also demark the area the town is interested in potentially using for a transfer station.Jurkowski responded that it would.“The map will show areas with restrictions and anything outside that area could be used for some other use, including a transfer station,” he said. There were no further questions following the discussion at the Town Board meeting. The board then voted in favor of allowing Jurkowski to provide the necessary correspondence to the DEC.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less