A proposed concrete batch plant at 3260 Route 9W has drawn controversy after the town’s building di-rector classified it as light industry, a use allowed in that zoning district, even though the Town Board has since passed a law defining such plants as heavy industry, which is not permitted there.

Building Director Dave Barton said state law and the town’s code require him to make such determina-tions.

“New York State Town Law, reflected in the Town of Lloyd’s ordinance, not only empowers Code Enforcement Officers with the responsibility of making determinations relative to the Zoning Code, it actually requires those determinations,” Barton said. “Those determinations are reviewable by the Zoning Board of Appeals if an aggrieved person feels they are incorrectly crafted. That is the appropriate route to take when disagreeing with a determination and it stands in contrast to the route currently being taken.”

Barton disputed a recent letter from Councilwoman Lacey Maffei to the full board suggesting his deter-minations stemmed from private conversations and the comments of one board member. He said they rest on sound legal precedent and case law.

Barton said he found the plant, as designed, falls under light industry because developer Luke Clemente will mitigate issues such as traffic, noise, air quality, dust, vibrations, emissions, scale and long-term community impacts.

Developer: ‘Material handling facility’
Clemente said his project has been mischaracterized. He said he is proposing a transit concrete plant, not a processing plant.

“The right word to describe this plant is a material handling facility and its whole purpose is to take these materials of sand, stone, concrete and water, that come in at a horizontal position and get them into a verti-cal position so they can be gravity fed into a concrete mixer truck,” Clemente said. “Then, while in-transit, the materials begin to blend and mix so when it arrives at the job site it is ready-mix concrete.”

Clemente said the plant does not manufacture concrete and is similar to a transfer station. He said it is sea-sonal and mostly dormant from Dec. 15 through March 15.

Clemente said he has been troubled by the handling of his proposal since he submitted his application last March. He said he was misinformed about the initial scheduling of the proposal before the Planning Board and later learned the town was considering a zoning change for his property that would block the project.

He said case law bars towns from using zoning to target and stop a project. However, an appeal filed against Barton’s light industry determination disputes that, noting that when an appeal is filed, the Zoning Board of Appeals must apply the zoning laws in place when it makes its decision.

“I do think assertions have been made regarding the project that are just fundamentally false and are not informed,” Clemente said. “Once a complete application is done then I think it’s time [at the public hear-ing] for people to take a hard look.”

He said his type of project “operates in the most environmentally restrictive jurisdiction probably in the world in New York State.”

“There are numerous levels of environmental regulations so I am very confident that the allegations that have been made here about this plant is really to suggest that we’re not going to be a law abiding corpo-rate citizen and that’s very troubling to me,” he said.

Clemente said that although Maffei has said the zoning change was not aimed at his plant, she is also ask-ing very specific questions about the project.

“This is the job of the planning board and they should be allowed to do their job; town boards do not do site plan reviews,” he said.

Maffei criticizes supervisor
Maffei said Barton rewrote his Sept. 24 determination to account for some of her concerns. She criticized Supervisor Stu Weiss for not responding to her emails or “in any other capacity.” She said the concrete plant “has become so messy and convoluted because there is just such a lack of any leadership from the Supervisor about what we are doing.”

Maffei said Weiss has been speaking with the developer behind the scenes “quite a bit and has not been upfront about it.”

“When people come to town board meetings the Supervisor doesn’t explain his position, he doesn’t say anything and prefers having one-on-one conversations with different people,” she said. “I am not having those one-on-one conversations because I don’t get an honest answer, so it’s not really valuable to me. I would rather do it when it’s on the record because at this point I would hate to be misled on this topic.”

Maffei is asking the town for:
• Barton’s legal authority to classify the project as light industry based on mitigation measures.
• The identity of anyone who helped draft the Sept. 23 determination.
• Evidence for every factual finding on the project’s scale, machinery, outdoor storage, water and electricity consumption, emissions, external impacts, truck traffic and proposed mitigation.
• Whether a qualified land-use attorney reviewed and approved Barton’s interpretation before it was issued.

She also wants an independent attorney to weigh in on the determination’s validity, its consistency with Local Law A on heavy industry, and its implications for the board’s legislative authority.

Maffei said the determination should be explained and discussed by the board with the supervisor, the Building Department and legal counsel.

“The next step is to see if this is legally correct because Mr. Barton is not a lawyer; he can look at the text and interpret it using his zoning and department knowledge, but then there is a piece that if it goes be-yond, which I think it has, it needs to be turned over to the legal team to find out if this is in the realm,” Maffei said.

She added that the process surrounding the plant “has been a giant cluster of mistakes, confusion and misinformation and it’s to everyone’s benefit that there is a clear, documented process.”

Weiss could not be reached by phone for comment. His voicemail was full.