Cashin Spinelli & Ferretti, LLC

January 25, 2017

Cashin Spinelli & Ferretti, LLC 801 Motor Parkway, Suite 103 Hauppauge, New York 11788 Attn: John M. Ellsworth

Re: Garvies Point Waterfront Project

Dear Mr. Ellsworth:

I am writing in regard to your June 14, 2016 letter to Mr. Zarin which I just received pursuant to a FOIL request.

In this letter, you tell Mr. Zarin that your May 16, 2016 letter to the City of Glen Cove Planning Board was submitted to the Court without your consent. During our telephone conference you were well aware that I was seeking updated comments from the Town of Oyster Bay, that I represent residents opposed to the Project, and that I was involved in litigation opposing this Project. You actually prepared these comments as a result of my request for the Town to update their comments from several years prior.

Your concerns regarding this project seem to have been alleviated without ever having conducted one follow-up study, analysis, or environmental review. A mere one (1) day after you received Mr. Zarin’s letter, all of your concerns as representative of an Interested Agency were somehow addressed.

Traffic In Mr. Zarin’s letter, he informs you that the City of Glen Cove Planning Board is not aware of any plans by the County to add a third through lane at the Northern Boulevard and Glen Cove Road intersection and that if you had any dissatisfaction with the Planning Board then you

1 should have challenged that decision in a timely fashion. I am curious as to why the Town did not challenge this determination considering LOS rating of “F” for this intersection?

Given that your firm represents the Town of Oyster Bay with these environmental impact concerns, you surely must have been aware of Mr. Zarin’s March 20, 2014 and November 30, 2015 Comments to the Village of Old Westbury on behalf of his client the Village of Brookville (attached). Mr. Zarin stated that travel through this intersection must be avoided as it is “one of the most congested intersections in the area.” Otherwise, he argues, the result will be spill over traffic into the immediate neighborhoods as well as the increased use of local routes as cut- through roads. Apparently, this Project of over eleven hundred (1100) new residents does not warrant such a concern.

Mr. Zarin informed you that the “Planning Board agreed that this intersection had issues, but was constrained by the County’s control of this intersection.” Apparently Mr. Zarin did not feel that constrained when it came to representing the Village of Brookville. In fact, there he argues that “traffic mitigation measures are certainly feasible.” The measures offered to the Village of Old Westbury do not involve the planting of trees miles away from this intersection as he offers here, but instead entails directing traffic away from and avoiding this intersection all together. This alternative was apparently not necessary nor feasible for this Project, but only for the Village of Old Westbury.

Subsurface Environmental Mr. Zarin assured you that “the Site will soon be deemed ready for redevelopment” in his June 13, 2016 letter. Did he not tell you or were you not aware that twelve days (12) before the date of his letter, the EPA issued a statement whereby it “proposed a plan to do some additional excavation of contaminated soil in some areas of the former Li Tungsten Property in Glen Cove, N.Y. [because s]oil at the site is contaminated with heavy metals including arsenic and lead, which can harm people’s health” ? (See attached EPA proposed plan).

Mr. Zarin states in his letter to you that the “opponents frankly do not understand the remediation or SEQRA processes” and that “[a]nyone who understands the strict regulatory and technical protocols knows that this $120 million cleanup is reaching its final stages.”

If this is the case, then why did the Developer’s representative state at a Planning Board hearing this past October, that the “New York State DEC has expressed concern about infiltration relative to the site and contamination on the site” and that “it’s possible that the contaminated soils could potentially increase contamination into the Creek” ? See pg. 12 from transcript attached.

Stormwater Management Under this heading, Mr. Zarin assured you, and you indicated that you were quite satisfied with his assurances, that the Planning Board carefully studied a stormwater management plan in 2011and that nothing in the 2015 Amendment changed that analysis.

In 2014, Governor Cuomo signed into law the Community Risk and Resiliency Act (“CRRA”) which clearly should have changed the analysis with the 2015 Amendment. The CRRA is intended to ensure that decisions regarding certain permits and expenditures consider climate risk, including sea-level rise and that the Department of Environmental Conservation recently adopted regulations establishing science-based State sea-level rise projections (2016 N.Y. Reg.

2 Text 408706). Where are the studies showing that climate risk and science-based State sea-level projections were considered with the 2015 Amendment ?

Mr. Zarin’s letter resulted in you having “no further inquiry regarding this subject” even though the stormwater management plan which he assured you was “studied by the Planning Board in 2011” has been rejected by the NY DEC. The DEC determined that this system could result in the contaminated soils on the Site increasing the contamination into the Creek. See Hearing Minutes attached.

In your letter to Mr. Zarin you expressed concern that a “municipality’s stormwater program must ensure no increase of a listed pollutant of concern to waterbody on the New York State 303(d) List of Impaired Waterbodies.” Glen Cove Creek is still listed on the 303(d) list.

Mr. Zarin also told you that “this Site will be in strict compliance with the storage volume” even though it is only going to be retaining two (2) inches of stormwater (emphasis mine). You stated that it seems inconsistent with the promotion of water quality improvements “that the project would be designed with only the bare minimum stormwater controls” and that “this project should [not] be held to the lowest possible standard for stormwarter management given the size of the development and associated magnitude of stormwater runoff volume, and the site’s location adjoining critical coastal resources.” So how is it that these concerns of yours were alleviated ?

What exactly was said in Mr. Zarin’s letter that moved you off of this position? He failed to cite any specific studies, statistics, analyses, or expert reports - he did not provide any scientific support. I have attached two expert reports recently prepared regarding the stormwater system and related analyses.

Mr. Zarin obviously persuaded you with his statement that “currently there is no stormwater management on the Project Site.” I’m not sure if you are aware that currently there are no structures of any kind on this site and that it is grass land, it is not pavement nor is it the 10 year construction site which the Developer proposes. You probably already know that living shorelines provide protection, adapt to rising sea levels, better withstand erosion, absorb storm surges and dynamic energy, and better protect our shorelines.

It is upsetting to think that in this day and age of post-Super Storm Sandy, CRRA, climate control concerns, and coastal erosion concerns, that an agency charged with representing the citizens of a coastal township could fail its constituents in such a troublesome manner.

Amy B. Marion, Esq. Lifelong TOB Resident

encl. cc: Oyster Bay Town Board

3 Commissioner, TOB Department of Environmental Resources TOB Town Attorney