After an 18-month hiatus, the KSH warehouse project finally returned to the Village of Montgomery’s planning board agenda on Wednesday, October 30. The project’s hearing featured a highly-anticipated noise study from the village’s consultant and elicited several concerns from residents who live near the site.

KSH RT 211, the project’s applicant, proposes two 60,000-square-foot warehouses and two 80,000-square-foot warehouses for Route 211 near Union and Weaver Street. Over the last few years, numerous residents have criticized the project’s size and location, with many asserting that this warehouse development will increase truck traffic, generate noise and light disturbances, and worsen the village’s water supply. Residents were especially unhappy with the applicant’s noise study and demanded the village conduct a third-party study, delaying the project’s hearing for a year and a half.

Enter Stephen Szulecki, vice president of The Noise Consultancy. The planning board hired Szulecki last August to conduct noise measurements near the proposed site and work with the applicant’s consultant on addressing residents’ noise concerns.

“In August, the village board of trustees authorized the planning board to retain the noise consultancy and conduct our own independent ambient noise measurements with our consultant,” said Amy Frisbie, planning board chairwoman. “Our expert report is now available and we have our noise expert here with us tonight.”

For the first half of the hearing, Szulecki presented his ambient noise report, comprising four measurements that he recorded between October 3 and 4 at the rear property line of 73 Weaver Street. Each measurement was an hour long, except the last one, and covered the afternoon, evening, night, and morning respectively. Szulecki noted that most of the applicant’s measurements were taken during the morning and afternoon, only covering about half the day’s noise levels.

“I was a little dismayed when the applicant decided to take measurements mostly during the peak of commute times in the morning and afternoon. That’s not to say there weren’t other measurements taken, but a great deal of measurements they took were from those periods,” Szulecki said. “Those are not representative of hours of the day, and certainly overnight hours, when the ambient levels are quite low.”

Szulecki showcased each measurement’s graph, illustrating the average noise levels for a Weaver Street household, and listed each of their noise sources. The measurements ranged between 40 and 47 A-weighted decibels, typical noise levels for a rural neighborhood, with the evening and night measurements being slightly higher due to nocturnal wildlife. All four graphs included a few infrequent noise spikes, usually caused by aircraft coming in and out of Orange County Airport or the occasional delivery truck.

“Some things that you wouldn’t be too surprised to find in the area during the afternoon of a beautiful day would be kids playing in the neighborhood, a lawn mower in the distance, and birds chirping,” Szulecki said, describing his afternoon measurement. “Being that the woods and wetlands were so close to where the measurements were taken, there’s a fair amount of summer insects and peepers active during those hours. A FedEx truck could be heard coming down Weaver Street, helicopters that are taking off and landing at the airport, a car horn, and plane overflights.”

Following his presentation, Szulecki explained that this study is a requirement of the DEC’s noise criteria and will serve as a baseline for the proposed site’s existing noise levels. This will help the applicant better understand conditions that would increase noise levels, such as truck traffic and inventory drop-offs, and consider ways of mitigating the project’s impact on the surrounding ambiance.

Several residents who live on Weaver and Union Street voiced their concerns to Szulecki. Given the site’s proximity to their homes, many asserted that the project would diminish their quality of life with constant noise from tractor-trailers entering and exiting the facility. One resident mentioned he could already hear coyotes from his living room at night, so the project’s truck traffic would be very loud and very difficult to block out.

“I think what we’ve all been saying as residents is we’re accustomed to a certain amount of noise in the Village of Montgomery. We understand that we live along a state route, and we understand that there are warehouses and farming operations around our village,” said Karina Tipton, a Weaver Street resident. “But what we do not want is to have our lives encumbered by additional noises that are greater than what we are accustomed to.”

After Szulecki left, several more residents reiterated their criticisms of the project to the planning committee. At the end of the meeting, the board agreed to continue KSH’s hearing on Wednesday, November 20 at 6 p.m. in the Montgomery Senior Center. Frisbie also mentioned that Szulecki and the applicant’s consultant will discuss residents’ feedback and troubleshoot potential issues during a technical meeting.