The Geneseo Town Planning Board took no action on the Draft Environmental Impact Study (DEIS) submitted by Newman Development for the Geneseo Town Center project at its meeting Monday night. Instead, the board set an extra meeting on August 27 to take the matter up.
That meeting will be held in the courtroom of the Geneseo Municipal Building on Main Street at 7 p.m. The meeting was moved from the regular location at the new town offices on Rt. 20A because a large crowd is expected.
The board will have to either accept the DEIS as ready for public review or send it back to the developer for additional work. The board has 45 days from the submission of the DEIS to make that decision. Please Don’t Destroy Geneseo (PDDG) has already criticized the DEIS as failing to meet the scope adopted by the Planning Board in respect to at least six areas. (See DEIS memo on The PDDG file.)
The Planning Board deferred action because the town’s engineers have not yet had a chance to complete their review of the DEIS. They are expected to complete that process and submit recommendations to the Planning Board by August 20.
If the Planning Board should decide that the DEIS is not yet complete, there is no time limit set for Newman to revise the study. Upon submission of a revised DEIS, the Planning board would then have 30 days to decide whether that revised version is complete.
Once the Planning Board accepts the DEIS as complete, a public comment period will commence which is expected to culminate with a public hearing before the Planning Board makes a final decision on whether the enviromental impacts of the project can be mitigated.
The Clarion News Blog 