Video recording

captions Language: en Tuesday August 10 2023 Webster Town board Workshop um tonight's a pretty special one only has one agenda item we have I'll say some dignitaries in the house tonight um and um but Jerry Goldman from Woods oviatt is going to do a presentation and to the extent that he's going to get assistance from Josh Huff yes I always want to and or Tom Walsh and or David Mann those three gentlemen represent the Coca-Cola Fairlife team and their team includes Haskell Engineers which Josh is here from and then when Tom Walsh Mr Walsh who is on his way he's with Berkeley Damon who I think is really somewhat representing Coca Cola Fair life on many aspects of this project and then David Mann is to the best of my knowledge David you're the highest ranking Coca-Cola Fairlife executive on this project that that I've met the day-to-day leave for the project sure so um with that all being said Jerry I'm gonna hand the Baton to you I know you have a semblance of a PDF or PowerPoint to present on where we're at as of August 10th on the uh the Seeker process on the Coca-Cola fairlight project thank you correct Mr supervisor it's a pleasure to be here good to see everybody again and um and what our objective is tonight is to uh present where we stand with Seeker where we are going going forward with Seeker in the review of the Fairlife project because I am sitting next to Josh does that mean I'm part of his team uh I'm Consulting with the town on on this matter and of course you have introduced uh Josh and Tom who I assume will be here momentarily in in Dave Mann but I'd also like to introduce um the team from mrb group who are the Consulting Engineers for the town on this matter uh Lance brabant and Paul Chatfield who have been working diligently on the uh on the review and on the issues for the town um so we'll follow along with the PowerPoint um and I will explain exactly how the secret process works it in for larger projects uh which are referred to as type 1 actions there are specific procedures which we have to follow under Town law and the first one is that the applicant must file a full environmental assessment form as part of that process part one the full environmental assessment form part one in and of itself is 14 pages the Haskell team and the Coke and fair life team have submitted a supplement to that which is approximately 17 or 1800 Pages which provides additional information and detail because of the magnitude of the project and because of the thoroughness and detail of of their review and which will help the town in the evaluation of not only the environmental impacts but also the project itself Town board has I'm not going to State the script because I rarely State a script because I usually don't have one but the uh but the town Board of course has the industrial use permit approval which is basically the last step in this process the the project which is being proposed is a permitted use in the industrial district but requires an industrial use permit from the town board but it also requires site plan approval from the planning board and there are variances which are necessary from town code primarily to provide mitigation to Neighbors on the particular site so this overall process uh is one which is headed up by dealing with the environmental review because a determination of significance under Seeker has to be completed before any decisions are made by any of the boards so the first stop is here and the last stop is here right right the environmental review is conducted in a project of this magnitude by a single lead agency and the only people that can be lead agencies are the uh are those which have approval Authority which are referred to as involved agencies the town had declared their intent to be the lead Agency for this environmental review on June 15th of this year what and as a result of that uh Fairlife filed their full environmental assessment form and the supplements part one uh to the town in a submission dated June 21st of of this year the notice of intent to serve as lead agency was sent out administratively was sent out uh by Josh artuzo to all the involved agencies on June 23rd that particular uh request to act as lead agency had to be accompanied by a copy of the application to the town to the town board as well as the full environmental assessment form fortunately for us unfortunately for the environment we're authorized to do that electronically so we didn't have to send 1800 pages of information out to all of the involved agencies they received their copies electronically Fairlife did submit a supplement to the full environmental assessment form dated July 11th so as a result in the abundance of caution because there is no specific um regulations that address a supplemental submission we sent out another notice to the involved agency he's again giving them the opportunity to contest lead agency status it was always clear that no one was going to contest the lead agency status because undertaking the environmental review is um is a heavy lift and most people would prefer to have somebody else do it and since the town board magnanimously agreed to do it then that I there was no challenge within 30 days of the initial notice and we don't expect that there will be any challenge within 30 days of the second notice which 30 days expires I believe on Saturday So to that extent we don't expect that there is going to be any issue and accordingly the town board has placed on its tentative agenda for August 17th action not a resolution to confirm its lead agency status Town board had the part one is the part which was filled out by the applicant and that is a process which is mandated uh by the regulation by code and regulations do uh give the applicant project sponsor the opportunity to fill out part one so for those who may be concerned about whether this process is being run by an applicant or not this is something which is required to be done by the applicant compare that with part two and part three the environmental assessment Forum which are mandated to be completed by the lead agency and part two of the eaf is identification of potential project impacts that particular analysis of identification is pursuant to a form uh which is part of the Seeker regulations and which sets forth all the various issues which could occur impact on land impact on traffic impact on drainage impact on sewers the like all of those all of those characteristics there are questions which have to be answered as part of that part two and those questions are are Guided by a document called The Seeker handbook which does provide some guidance in terms of how to fill all that out ultimately uh once part two is completed we move on to part three which is an evaluation of the magnitude and importance of project impacts and determination of environmental significance part two and part three are completed together and generally are reviewed and adopted together by the lead agency the lead agency has a legal obligation to take what's referred to as a hard look at all relevant environmental issues and make a reasoned elaboration of its rationale in coming to its determination's significance in terms of the actual paperwork what we are going to do as as Town staff and Consultants are going to work on a draft of a part two and part three for the board's consideration it's the board that makes the ultimate decision and can take take the document work with it and decide what to do with it and whether they are comfortable uh with what they have or whether they want to make changes on it but the town board has placed also on its tentative August 17th agenda a resolution to adopt that part two in part three and to make a secret determination of significance so the determination of significance is one of two things in a type 1 action is either a what's referred to as a negative declaration which sounds bad but actually is pretty good in the whole scheme of things because it would be a determination that the project will not have significant adverse environmental impacts let me put a little emphasis on the words significant adverse environmental impacts doesn't mean that there won't be any environmental impact it means that there won't be anything which is environmentally significant if that negative declaration is adopted by the town board that concludes the Seeker process and that releases the rest of the boards and other outside agencies to go make their decisions on the on their applications the other alternative is what's referred to as a positive declaration positive declaration is a determination based upon everything that's put in front of you that the project may have significant environmental impacts and would mandate the preparation of an environmental impact statement the idea of what the applicant has done in providing all the information that they have to date is to provide sufficient information to allow the board to make a determination of significance and hopefully what they are saying is the project is essentially pre-mitigated and that is at all potential adverse environmental impacts have been addressed so that the board can make that finding that the project will not have significant adverse environmental impacts so that is the framework of how the decision making goes and that's how the environmental review process goes for some of you this is things that you have done a number of times for some of you this may be kind of new in terms of following what the steps are but we have been uh as a team uh Josh and uh and everybody else reviewing the documents that have been received the environmental assessment form the expanded environmental assessment form the 1800 initial Pages a supplement which was provided and additional information which has been provided by Fairlife have also been shared with other involved agencies which have the ability to comment and some of them have and some of them frankly probably should have commented by now but we're we are urging them to get them in now and not wait until later so as recently as this afternoon we receive comments from from one of those agencies we are awaiting uh the full County Planning review under General Municipal law section 239 M uh that uh Josh has been monitoring the portal and uh and right now it's uh in in review and we anticipate that that will be coming within the next couple of days so at this point we will be taking a look at all of these issues and as they're deemed to be relevant um the necessity of providing a full narrative on any of the potential environmental topics normally does not only is required if the impacts are marked in the part two of the aaf as moderate to large as opposed to none to small but in some cases there is some real need even if there is a finding in the part two that is none to small to provide a narrative to really give some substance to the review of it and to indicate that the town has taken that hard look as as is required under the Seeker regulations So to that to that extent that sets the procedural framework for what we have here um and the work the work continues uh Our intention would be to provide uh a draft in advance of a meeting so that the board has the opportunity to review uh to review that means we're seriously on the clock right now if we're looking to keep the 17th so uh in that regard I that's my introduction and I think I will leave it to the board to ask any questions that they have either a procedure or a substance I do have a question go ahead is there a deadline for the other agencies to make comments there really isn't uh there's no obligation for them to make comments we request them and a lot of them are are normally pretty slow in terms of their response sometimes you gotta push a little bit in order to get the response the only one that does have a time limit and time frame is Monroe County planning on the 239 was referred to as a 239m referral that is supposed to be done within 30 days at a time it is referred by the town that 30 days technically expires on Saturday okay so uh in terms of getting input from Lake County DOT and others uh they they don't have an obligation to respond at this point okay okay and I was going to say that uh The Honorable Mr Walsh came in during Jerry's presentation Tom do you see we have a we got you up here where were you you're at the head tank okay I'm not around it all the time it's okay you have it right um and as we do get into whether it's a question and answer or just a round table of discussion amongst uh the town team that's working on this and also the Coca-Cola Fairlife team that's working at it uh I I will say when you said you know Jerry that Josh is working on it just so we're not confused Josh yeah Josh artuzo correct who is our uh the town's director of Community Development he along with you and and woods oviatt along with mrb are somewhat the town team that is gonna basically be assisting the town board on saying in good faith can we vote on this resolution that there is hopefully negative uh impact and whether we can do that by next Thursday which is the tentative scheduling of that um now within that uh a project of this magnitude I mean having David Mann here from Coca-Cola having Tom Walsh here from Barkley Damon and having Josh Huff here from Haskell you know invaluable the working relationship between their team and our team on you know I think we hope we're all aligned on the fact that we would like to um get through the Seeker process above reproach I've been using that term a lot but also not dragging it out for four years um so there's the challenge I mean you want to do it the right way and I would imagine and I you know attorneys say that you should never ask a question in court that you don't know the answer to right well this is in court so I'm going to ask these questions a project like this um I think we sent this off to 30 plus agencies Josh artuzzo it's a little bit less than that but there were there were many okay is that a large amount of agencies to send something to relative to other projects you're asking for common sense I would believe so yes okay 1800 page supplements of the 14 pages is that a relatively large digital file to send over to these agencies I believe so yes you probably busted a server or two it's okay probably well you know and I always you know going back to you know when you're in school like the teacher got the the the pr the paper the term paper was 10 pages well that's a c if it was 27 Pages that's an a that's an A plus uh 1800 you you did not leave anything out that that's pretty robust um so and and you would expect that because this is this is a very large project in every way you can metric compare this to for something that happens in New York state Seeker so with that being said I certainly Patty thank you for the first question um have at it uh so we're gonna have to wait for a contract well the county you said yeah yeah well we'll have to wait for that and and get there and get that comment in one thing that would be valuable to our team is as you have seen pieces of this project and if you've heard because as Town board members you always hear from your public okay if there are any particular issues that you would consider to be environmental environmentally sensitive that you would like us to focus on we certainly can have added attention to it we understand the traffic will be uh one of those and mrb does have as a subconsultant urban Anthony engineering which did a review and which has provided that review which is part of our our overall package right now so we have the towns input on the uh on the traffic we have preliminary comments from from County D.O.T who is an important player because basket Road and salt Road are both uh are both County Roads obviously the town in in one what is being proposed in terms of the extension of Bolter Industrial Parkway and and the planning and everything else I think there's been a lot of foresight into what the overall traffic pattern would be to minimize the overall impact to the town's Road network and to the county road Network so you know that that is something that clearly is going to be an issue that we'll be looking at uh no matter how the recommendation of checking the boxes is on the part two there'll be narrative relative to that um so if there's anything else which jumps out at you right now feel free to share if there's something that comes in your mind over the weekend uh I think I I hope everyone has my email address if not it's pretty easy it's first initial last name at woodsoviet.com so uh so feel free to feel free to share that to councilman Kale's question about we're waiting on the county but going back to Patty's question yes they have a deadline of Saturday they have they have a 30-day deadline of Saturday okay to to give a response now if they don't give a response they there's no real penalty to them what it means is that you're free to proceed without them okay that 30-day period is a marker in which they are supposed to you're supposed to wait for their response okay every indication is that they are going to give us the response literally any day now of which we have one left before Saturday right so so and what they do is part of their process is that they send uh information out to a whole series of agencies County and state agencies and solicit their initial review and comment as well so we we're anxiously waiting for it we we really want to see what that what that says Jerry would you be surprised if they didn't respond in the 30 days I would be surprised they didn't respond in 32 days I think it could arrive on Monday yeah okay but I I think that there's some pressure on them and and in reality look I mean the fact of the matter is is that I think that there's a lot of interest in this project and I think for that reason uh it's really incumbent on the county to go and do that I know Josh is uh is prepared if he hasn't already reached out to uh the person who coordinates uh the County Planning reviews to uh uh to try to accelerate the process and uh yeah we hope we hope it's forthcoming I don't mean to laugh but I know how the county operates I've been involved with them for many years so I would not be surprised if we didn't see it in the 30 days yep and I well I think councilman Abbott is probably the most versed of the Town board members on Seeker based on his career as an engineer in these type of projects uh I know that I've gone to school on him on a lot of this and I still feel like I'm learning every day about how this secret process works especially a type one um with that being said is the you know when I first looked at this and I just assumed and you know what happens when you assume that the Seeker is all within the 100 plus acres that is where the plant is being built I think I've got an education in the last month that no that it goes beyond that uh pardon it could be a you know the sewer has a lot to do with it uh um it is the county in a lot of ways involved in this commenting on the traffic because of the fact that salt road is a county road yeah that if if these were town roads and not state roads and whatever um they wouldn't be as prevalent at all about commenting right they would they would not be what's referred to as an involved agency there would be an interested agency they could comment if they thought it was appropriate but generally speaking these agencies don't go out of their way to comment because of their workloads unless there's something specific uh which relates to their jurisdiction So to that extent clearly the state uh the county has jurisdiction over basket clearly is jurisdiction over salt at basket before we really kick in the expressway or after we kick in the expressway however we want to determined is still a state road so the state would have an interest in the impacts at 104 and 104 in basket for example uh so yeah they they're involved and they're engaged to the extent that it does impact their uh their Road Network yeah and I just I guess the the 1600 foot extension being proposed west of the end of boulter to Salt Road that's encompassed within this Seeker it is it is encompassed within the Seeker to the extent that the underpinnings of the traffic analysis okay speaks to the connection of that road and that deals with the trip distribution the analysis of levels of service and the like and with all that the underpinnings of the traffic report are are tied to that extension if that extension were not to come to fruition that would really involve a re-analysis of of the traffic and what the traffic impacts would be so while there will not uh you know there there will be some analysis of impacts related to to that as as a road development occurs there may be some further analysis whether it's formal and Seeker or otherwise dealing with uh issues related to the road pavement section and the like in construction but yeah the sewer at the same time our G E's participation as Bill pointed out um remember this is a coordinated review among all these agencies we are the lead Agency for that review so when we are done with our Seeker analysis then they're free to go ahead and to do their own their own thing if you will and their own decision making relative to uh to the matter um if it's a negative declaration that is the end of the secret process if it were to be a positive declaration in order to do a full environmental impact statement on this each of those agencies would have to make Seeker findings we would have to make secret findings for us and each of those agencies would have to make independent Seeker findings if it is a negative declaration the the environmental review process is deemed complete but everyone's underlying applications still have to be evaluated on their own criteria a negative declaration does not mean that the planning board has to Grant Cyclone approval the negative declarations not mean the zoning board has to Grant variances they each have standards that they need to review but because of the coordinated review is completed those agencies are relieved of the obligation of studying the environmental impacts right as it relates to it but but they still have their underlying jurisdiction they still have their underlying uh obligations to analyze so it's interesting and I think I hope this ties into overall what you just said Jerry is that uh back in July 20th the town board did a resolution at our board meeting um to retain uh campus construction management as our project coordinator on behalf of the Town actually Dan Andrews from campus is here tonight um and as we s in the last couple weeks um as our side as our team at the town has sat down with Dan and Jared and various members of Campus there's been some discussion about what what part of this what comes under this project that needs to be coordinated from you know from the town perspective and we've said really it's it's the sewer plant on Phillips Road and and that project the conveyance pipe project that it has you know sewer Mains coming out of the Tibor uh site um the 1600 foot of Road that is proposed to be extended and the the 650 000 square foot plants that Coca-Cola Fairlife plans on building we had some kind of back and forth on this a ton of them like they all need to be considered by us because they all I think that's what you just said they all somewhat have an uh an effect on how this Seeker is being looked at it is all part of what's referred to as the action you don't do Seeker on an application you do seek a review on an action and the action that we're talking about is the is the construction primarily initially the construction of the plant itself but there are other aspects of this action that are part of the environmental review right because Seeker mandates that you review the entire action unless there's a reason to was referred to as segment or to consider other aspects of it at a different time and if you were to do that it can be no less protective of the environment than it would be if then if you analyze it at the very beginning and and that's a confusing issue but the the sewer plan on Phillips I mean Charlie I think we had we had long ago done the Seeker on that when we were the sewer plant we were we were getting into that and doing the phase two on that long before Coca-Cola Fairlife came out came around when they came around we tweaked it but we just amended that specific speaker because it's all encompassed within what we were doing on that site anyway um is that correct yes basically that's correct so um but I think and uh look at I think we have our side the team now all agreeing that yeah we do have to look at all four of those items that I just mentioned because they all well I mean in layman terms and I guess I'll look at you David Mann that your goal is to be pushing product out of there in the fourth quarter of 2025.