Video recording

thank you Mr supervisor so believe it or not you're actually looking at some historic photos of 600 Ridge Road as many of you may know prior to 1980 this site was home to various commercial and Retail operations there was once a meat market a plumbing supply store a pizza parlor and most recently the Webster furniture strippers so the property consists it's just under two tenths of an acre parcel located at the northwest corner of Ridge and gravel roads there are two existing structures on the site the primary structure is a little over three thousand square feet it's a two-story wood frame building and there's also a 700 four square foot detached garage the current zoning of this area is lc1 low intensity neighborhood commercial so I'm just going to go over a brief history of the property tax and ownership from about 2006 until the present so back in 2006 the Webster furniture strippers business closed abruptly and the property was essentially abandoned by the owner around 2009 Monroe County initiated the tax foreclosure process due to several years of unpaid taxes now there were no bidders at that auction primarily due to the environment the unknown environmental concerns so the county opted not to take title to the property due to those unknown concerns so actually the property reverted back to the private owner at that time and that cycle has continued for approximately an additional 10 to 12 years annually going up for auction not having any bidders and the county deciding not to take ownership of the property due to the unknown environmental concerns so it is been a crazy cycle that has repeated itself and essentially the the unpaid tax bill has continued to accumulate and there is approximately a hundred and thirty four thousand dollars of unpaid property taxes um and it is important to note that the property is under private ownership so now I'm going to turn it over to Mary Harrington the town engineer and she's going to give a brief summary of the phase two environmental site assessment and the structural report thanks Josh um yeah so I'm going to go over the long scientific report that we received from day engineering and a structural report as well on the buildings I want to start out with why there is this idea that there are environmental concerns at the site so in the timeline of 1991 to 1993 the neighboring property alerted the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation a perceived operational violations and then following that notification the New York State DEC Monroe County Department of Health and the U.S Environmental Protection Agency otherwise known as the EPA performs site visits documented findings and found violations one such violation was an air emission test the site was required to have a permit for the chemicals being used and it was tested at nine times the permissible limit there was an area where I didn't have information on between 93 and 2000 but again in 2000 the business remained non-compliant with air emission permitting from New York State DEC started a legal case against the business the town supervisor at the time Catherine Thomas wrote a letter to the New York State DEC compelling them to proceed with legal action to force the business into compliance with no action taken by the owner the business continued to operate without permits or proper air control and then as Josh mentioned in 2006 the business abruptly closed in the property was abandoned so the phase two report in itself is a complicated matter but how did we get to um the the ability to have a consultant on the site and actually occupy the site and take soil samples air samples and things of that nature in April of 2020 the town coordinated with the county and had a meeting in an effort to strategize how this property could achieve Redevelopment in August of 2020 the town foiled DEC for environmental records so that was summarized on the previous slide in January of 21 Town officials met with Lozier environmental Consulting Group a local Consulting uh firm in the area to discuss how to complete a phase one and a phase two testing report at the site because the property was still under private ownership the town was able to obtain access by that private owner and enter the building to see if it was safe enough for this report to be completed it was deemed safe to enter in March of 21 at A Town board Workshop Lozier presented a proposal to complete phase one and two testing but discussion by the board determined that it was not prudent to place the town in a position of liability should Environmental Testing results manifest in expensive and immediate remediation on a privately owned property in May of 2021 the property exchanged hands and the town has attempted to contact the new owner with no response in November of 2021 through May of 2022 Town and County Legal councils discussed how to file a motion for temporary control of the site through the Supreme Court in October of last year a judge granted temporary control to Monroe County not the town a phase II environmental site assessment contract was executed with the County's consultant day engineering which the town reimbursed the county in full for over the course of November of last year through March of this year the field investigation was completed a report was completed and the Town and County reviewed its contents once the report was submitted to the judge it ended the County's access to the property so what is an environmental site assessment there's three different types a phase one is non-intrusive comprehensive examination to recognize to identify recognized environmental conditions also known as Rex it does not confirm the presence or absence of contamination rather it assesses the potential for contamination a phase two is conducted typically after a phase one the purpose is to to determine if there is actual contamination present but it does not quantify the extent of the contamination typically during a phase two soil Vapor testing drilling or Excavating to collect samples of soil and groundwater and testing for hazardous materials occurs a phase three is more comprehensive than a phase two and typically involves more sampling analysis and Reporting to the point where you could determine the nature and extent of contamination at a property and develop a remediation plan to clean up any contamination what the town had completed was a phase two so during the phase two the following field work was completed surface soil evaluation sub subsurface soil evaluation monitoring well sampling sub slab Vapor screening a drain evaluation a building materials survey and a structural assessment day engineering completed the first part Watts architecture and engineering completed the building materials survey and Jace Griffith engineering completed the structural assessment before we move on I wanted to clarify what some of the terms being used mean so the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has determined what level of contamination is allowable based on the property use an unrestricted use land may be used and developed without any imposed environmental restrictions this is for example an agricultural use a residential use is a category which allows a site to be used for any other use other than rating raising livestock or producing animal products for human consumption for example single-family housing commercial use land may be used only for the purpose of buying selling or trading of merchandise or Services Limited Redevelopment without remediation for example a retail store or a service provider and then soil cleanup objectives also known as scos the level of contamination allowable based on the proposed use of land so for each of these different types of uses we're focusing tonight on unrestricted or commercial there is a soil cleanup objective which is a threshold of how much contamination could be there to use the land in that function so I know the map is a little bit challenging to read but hopefully when you get home later this week you could look at the slideshow but I'm going to start with the soil evaluation so this was a combination of real-time VOC monitoring volatile organic compounds and then laboratory analytical of soil samples that tested for vocs svocs semi volatile organic compounds metals and pcbs um the map to the right when you do have a chance to look at it closer identifies different areas where soil testing was completed on the site so um and then I gave a little legend for what the different notations mean at the bottom so when they looked at the soil in the field they used a piece of equipment to get real time readings on the level of vocs that were detected in the air so a helpful definition is parts per billion is ppb and parts per million is PPM so they'll be referenced on subsequent slides as a result the main building basement read no evidence of vocs and the exterior at ss1 as indicated on the map which is located between the main building and the garage VOC rate range from 0 to 76 parts per billion at location SS2 surface soil 2 north of the garage vocs ranged from 29 to 5160 parts per billion to put this in perspective a low-level alarm on the piece of equipment shown on the previous slide is 10 000 parts per billion and high level alarm is 25 000 parts per billion so the surface readings of the soil were both far below either the low or the high alarm so walking past the site or within the site you wouldn't be exposed to a VOC Vapor reading that would be alarming to this industry also taken were VOC readings as they took the soil out of the ground so when they completed boars they took soil samples where there was staining or other indication of contamination I want you to note the depth of these locations of the soil tests there are readings that are higher than the high level alarm that were taken at the site as they extracted soil from the Earth specifically tb3 was taken at a depth of 19 feet so this isn't anything that you'd be exposed to walking by the property however it was found deep in the ground similarly tb6 was found to be over the limit and that again was at 15.5 feet deep to put this into perspective in another way if you were to open a Sharpie nail polish remover or be near gasoline you'd be exposed to over 500 parts per million of vocs so while it is obviously not good to have 492 vocs come out of the earth we are exposed to these vocs in day-to-day life but just not at a constant um but hopefully not constantly so now I'm going to go into what was tested at the lab when they collected these soil samples when they tested four vocs in the actual soil there was only one sample from inside the garage that detected the VOC methylene chloride exceeding the unrestricted SEO so as I mentioned before the unrestricted SEO would be if the land was used for single family use however it is much lower than the commercial threshold for this organic compound which is 500 parts per million when testing for svocs these are semi-volatile organic compounds some examples are formaldehyde acetone ether or DDT no samples tested were detected concentrations greater than the unrestricted SEO they tested for metals and samples one metal that was detected that exceeded the thresholds was led three samples detected elevated levels two exceeded the unrestricted SEO one at a depth of four to six feet another at a depth of two to four feet a third exceeded the commercial SEO at a depth of zero to six inches so if you um if the site were to be used for something commercial or unrestricted these contaminants were located anywhere from six inches to six feet down Mercury was also detected it was only elevated above the unrestricted sco and it was at a depth of six feet or less the final test to the soils were for pcbs polychlorinated by phenols which is a man made organic compound which has been banned since 1979 and has been used in materials such as Teflon one sample from inside the garage tested positive and it was located at a depth of four to six feet in summary soil testing identified contaminants to a depth of six feet there were soil tests taken on soils that were deeper in the Earth where there was staining but they did not come back with anything above the unrestricted SEO all of them were before below the commercial SEO concentration apart from lead in a surface sample that was less than six inches from the surface monitoring Wells were installed in three of the test spores with the intention of collecting water samples from Three locations this was to both tests for contaminants and triangulate groundwater flow patterns to determine what may be entering or leaving the site in November of 2022 monitoring well one which was 17.3 feet deep and countered groundwater petroleum-based VOC compounds and Lead were detected exceeding New York State DEC concentration guidance monitoring well to 16.3 feet deep and monitoring well 3 16 feet deep did not encounter water so sampling was not able to be had in January of 2023 with snow melts we thought that maybe the groundwater table had risen and maybe we'd have more success in our sampling we went back and had monitoring well one sampled again and again petroleum-based VOC compounds were detected and exceeded New York State DEC concentration guidance monitoring weld 2 encountered ground water this time and no contaminants were detected monitoring well 3 again did not encounter water and the depth of these Wells was limited due to the encountering of bedrocks so with Wells were installed at a deeper deeper depth it would take a more powerful piece of equipment to get through the Bedrock sub slab Vapor screening was completed so this is where you take a piece of a slab and you see what Vapors have come up through the soils beneath that slab so one sample was taken under the building basement slab no constituents detected at concentrations greater than air guidance and or 90th percentile of New York State Doh guidance which are the two standard guidances in this industry two samples were taken under the garage floor six constituents detected at concentrations greater than these two guidances methylene chloride which is a paint stripper acetone a paint remover carbon disulfide which softens paints and varnishes chloroform a solvent for lacquers polish and resin hexane a solvent and cleaning agent and to lean which is used in the manufacturing of paint and liqueurs so these all make sense for why they were in that garage a drain evaluation was completed there was a drain in the garage and a drain in the building basement that were attempted to be traced the garage strain was clogged and was unsuccessful in tracing the basement drain was successfully traced to a sanitary manhole nearby which means it isn't entering the the natural waterways and is going to the treatment plant for treatment should anything have ever been put down that drain a material survey was conducted inside the buildings asbestos was tested for and much of the pipe insulation flooring mastics glazings and were found to contain asbestos as is predictable in a building of this age lead-based paint again tested positive in many areas because of the age and pcbs were tested no items detected levels exceeding 50 parts per million and therefore would not require special handling and Disposal a structural assessment was completed these are photos from inside the building recently the main building is structurally sound it requires repair and replacement of components but is very salvageable and the garage is recommended for demolition so the next steps in Day engineering's Report they recommended installation of a vapor mitigation system similar to a household radon system that would help treat any Vapors that came up through the subsurface installation of additional monitoring Wells to triangulate the groundwater movement character characterization of fill samples additional materials testing for asbestos and lead paint and developing a remediation and or site mitigation plan challenges to complete this today it's under private ownership and the County's temporary court ordered control has expired so I would also say that completing a phase one Esa is recommended typically a phase one comes before a phase two but because of the dec documents obtained by the town there was reasonable information to go right to a phase two however a phase one would review the neighboring properties and any potential impacts that they may have had to 600 Ridge Road It is believed that a gas station dispensing petroleum products and leaded gasoline may have existed on the property to the West perhaps explaining some of the results of the testing the petroleum and Lead that was encountered was very deep in the ground the vocs that were red were from samples very deep in the ground near the water table and typically how contaminants move from one site to another is it migrates down through the soils to the water table and then moves with the water table to wherever it's flowing so it's possible that some of the things encountered at 600 Ridge Road did not start at 600 Ridge Road also recommended is completing a phase three environmental site assessment this would quantify the extent of impact to the site and develop a plan for remediation and would incorporate day engineering's recommendations again the challenge to complete this now is that it is privately owned and the County's temporary court ordered control has expired I'm glad to see you're all still awake I know it's a little bit technical but I'm going to pass it over to Matt Chatfield for the Hamlet revitalization update thank you Mary uh I'd like to commend Mary for taking up four three to four hundred page document and Distilling it down to about 25 slides that most people can be able to understand so that's quite an effort as you know there's been multiple levels of investigation and activity taking place in the West Webster Hamlet our efforts at 600 Ridge are at the epicenter of the Hamlet itself but there's multiple layers of initiatives currently taking place so the Hamlet master plan and additional property Rehabilitation efforts are taking place simultaneously to the efforts that the town is undertaking a 600 Ridge so for those of you who are familiar it's very it's this should be um not new to you but in 2021 the town was awarded ninety thousand dollars to help develop a master plan for the Hamlet so taking a bigger step back right a more global perspective on how can we Revitalize this part of our community and that planning study should be complete here in the next month or so and the final recommendations were uh on display a few weeks back at a public open house that took place at Finn Park so the results of that will be made available and the goal of this effort is to identify recommendations moving forward for not just 600 rich but all the properties surrounding it and then build momentum and of course put the town in a great position to apply for funding from state and federal partners in addition the town recently applied for about 1.8 million dollars in direct funding for the rehabilitation of targeted properties within the Hamlet there's four properties including number one there which is 600 Ridge there's four properties in in total that surround the intersection of gravel and and old Ridge Road and that's the epicenter of revitalization efforts in hopes that growth and investment will spread from there and maybe some of you may be asking well why not does just demolish that old building why rehabilitate it well there's good arguments potentially for either either direction the goal of rehabilitating the property is twofold first of all the urban form of that little Hamlet with the four buildings you know each of the sides of the intersection being uh yeah bookended essentially by a structure creates that sense of place that it is a viable little Community a village-like center tearing down a building and having that be open and vacant would detract from potential revitalization efforts although it may help eliminate an eyesore immediately in the long term it may actually be a detriment to the overall growth and revitalization of the Hamlet second of all in order to re-develop that site the site's just too small to be any sort of have any sort of viable Redevelopment take place that could be funded and make basically be bankable and have a return on investment so the existing structure has been identified for Rehab so the next steps for in this bigger picture Mary talked about the next steps for the environmental side but next steps for the overall revitalization we need to identify what the environmental next steps are right so what additional information do we need for a remedial plan and Mary went over that we phase one phase three so we know what those next steps are in addition Mary constantly related that the property is still privately owned right the property owner is absentee they have not been willful in in their involvement and revitalized on the Hamlet or investing in their property so we need a path forward to identify in a new owner or a new uh title holder of that property that will be a willing and viable partner in this effort assembling funding sources the Webster Economic Development Alliance that's where we come in we apply for funding on behalf of the town and at a host of different levels federal and state so we're trying to assemble a funding package to bring uh implementation to the front and then implementing the Hamlet master plan we're thinking first steps are going to be some streetscape improvements on Old Ridge Road and gravel those are the that's the first available funding source that would likely be available in starting in October of this year and then obviously continuing to encourage investment within the community by the existing property owners and with that we're actually going to open it up to any questions thank everyone you wanna yeah come on Can You Hear Me I don't have any questions um but I just wanted to to comment to thank the team for all the work that they've done I know that this particular area in this particular house in question has been been looked at for many many years and it's very very nice to see that we're moving forwards towards the end goal so thank you all for everything that you've done Cahill said and I want to certainly thank all of you for presenting tonight Mary you did a tremendous job it making sense out of that 400 page document I was educated tonight as well Matt I want to reach out and thank you for all that you've done thus far in securing funding to get us this far and I think it's important for everyone who's watching to realize just what a task it has been to get us to this point from where we've been for several years with sort of handcuffed and not being able to do anything that we were able to reach out and and strike a partnership with the county to get us to at least identifying some of what's there and of course taking that big unknown out of out of the picture hopefully will help us to move forward certainly there's more work to be done um and I look forward to seeing what comes next thank you well I just want to comment you know Mary Josh and um chat two I'm sorry for all your works and I want to thank you everyone here that come and to hear our presentation it's a long time coming and you know all the hard work where you do pay off and I thank you for all the patience that the community had given us so that we can do what our dilute Works to help our community thank you no questions at this time but I want to appreciate all the work you've done and uh we'll see what we can do about the ownership issue uh again I Echo the other comments about uh regarding the presentation and the three presenters thank you very much great job made everything hopefully understandable I've got I do have one question where is the well number one located on the property it's um it's pretty Central to it Matt's getting it it's in between the main building and the garage the highest highlighted area between the main building and the garage below the north Arrow okay I do have a comment also I'd like to make I'd like to underscore the the fact that the town does not have any ownership of this property we do not have the right to even enter onto the property to do any work the um the county got received the order it's an unusual process the county did receive an order granting a temporary incidence of ownership which enabled the day engineering and the others to go in and do their sampling and testing but at this point not only do we not have ownership we don't even have the right to go on the property so I think it needs to be underscored this is It's been a very long process as you can see I'm glad Josh started back in 2006 showing that the prior owner just abandoned the property didn't pay the taxes and walked away and the town has been trying to figure out a way to to deal with it and we've done now weave at the Town Town Administration and department heads have done quite a quite a great job and also Matt I'd like to include him done a great job and moving this forward but there's a lot to be done we're only I don't know a small way through at this point so anyway thank you again all of you and uh you know I just like to say I mean I've been working with uh Mary and Josh and Matt on this um for some time and I go back to the beginning when I was up on the podium a half an hour ago um the unknown environmental issue I think for people who are in attendance tonight or anybody that watches this tape in the future there's a big milestone that was accomplished by this phase two testing in November and January it is not unknown anymore and I know that over the years there's been you know a lot of concern about what exactly is there we have a pretty good idea now of what is there um but we don't have a definitive answer really to tell you the truth about some of it the petroleum-based the lead that's deep in the soils and in the water in the petroleum did it generate at 600 Ridge or is it coming in from an old oil tank that's at an adjacent property and that's why there's more work that needs to be done and we have to you know kind of gather the troops here uh in the town in the in the various Partners we've been working with to figure out what the best path forward is um especially as we dovetail toward September of this year because there is another real estate Monroe County real estate tax foreclosure auction and I got to give Mary credit for this the one slide where it had the Looney Tune the circular logic do you remember that private property no paid taxes on unknown environmental goes back to the person 15 plus years that went on and I'd like to think what just transpired in the last few months um will maybe help us get to September which is what five months away Charlie where our continued efforts with the county um might manifest who that next owner is who is willing to go in and invest and also what funding they can get to go in to rehabilitate and also to remediate whether that's going to be scraping six inches of soil or whether that's going to be more we just don't know yet but for anybody in the audience or anybody watching this if they've had huge concerns over the years and some people have voiced to me they have um it is not as bad as I think some people had uh made it out to be um but it's certainly I don't want to minimize that I'm sure there is going to ultimately have to be some type of remediation uh as that property moves forward and I can't stress this enough and Matt you did a wonderful job uh explaining all the parallel things going on for what is really a whole neighborhood revitalization but I think we would all agree that you're really perfuming the pig on neighborhood revitalization revitalization if you don't hit on 600 Ridge that's a linchpin and unless that property is resolved then the rest of that revitalization is really never gonna you know get traction because investors and private money they're just not going to come in and put in a Street of Shops and all that stuff when that when that is uh when that is sitting there so I'll get off my soapbox and I really appreciate for the crowd that was here tonight being understanding of why we we really we wanted a workshop setting uh because even if you did ask a lot of questions you want to really be frustrated we'd be sitting here probably answering we don't know we don't know we don't know so I want to you know I just want to be very upfront with that there is a lot we don't know right now but there's a lot more we know than we did a year ago and by the time we have our next follow-up meeting stay tuned we're hoping that in a couple of months we can get a panel of experts up here to answer the Public's questions you know whether that panel is someone from the New York State DC or the federal EPA or the the New York state or Monroe County Health Department those are people that could probably answer the Public's questions about this much better than I hate to say it than Mary Josh Matt or myself or anybody on this panel that that's not our expertise so give us some time to to talk to those people and see if we can put together something in a couple of months um that will have public interaction so with that I want to thank the presenters I want to thank the board I want to thank everybody who came and that concludes our workshop for the evening and be on the lookout uh it'll be on the website I think Karen and on social media the 400 page report from day engineering if you have insomnia try to read that but also this approximate 30 page um PowerPoint will be there and certainly as Mary said on your own screen or printing out the map that's up there and I think it'll be easier for you to follow and by all means take advantage before the next meeting of sending us questions and comments the more public questions and comments before the next meeting the better we're prepared to have a meeting that answers those for the public so thank you