Opinion: Amper responds to criticism of opposition to Kent shelter plans

I’ve been working for more than 25 years to protect water quality and preserve open space. I’ve rarely experienced the kind and degree of personal attack as I have seen in connection with the application for expansion of the Kent Animal Shelter into the protected Core Preservation Area of the Pine Barrens. It has been my experience that those who engage in personal attacks, usually don’t have the facts on their side. I’d like to respond to George Goode’s recent post.

I have said repeatedly that Kent provides an important public service, but critics of the Pine Barrens Society’s position ignore this and personalize the debate. I’m particularly impressed by the number of homeless pets they place. The issue is not the worthiness of Kent’s work, but where expansion should take place. While protecting Long Island’s purest groundwater source, we have been actively advocating for identification of a new and better site outside the Pine Barrens Core. This represents an obvious solution to the conflict, but is being ignored.

Development in the Core Preservation Area of the Pine Barrens is largely prohibited by law. It’s a state law that serves Long Island well. Contrary to Mr. Goode’s assertion, I have acknowledged that Kent may apply for a Extraordinary Hardship Waiver and have participated in the hearings on the application. However, we don’t believe that Kent qualifies for the waiver and fear that approval of the waiver would set a dangerous precedent for other development in the Core. Mr. Goode ignores the fact that The Pine Barrens statute says explicitly that the public health and safety provision:  “applies generally only to public agencies such as LIPA, school districts, ambulance districts and municipalities and is only granted in extraordinary circumstances of demonstrated public health and safety or adaptive reuse of an historic resource.”

Kent Claims it will prevent toxoplasmosis transmitted by feral cats
Kent argues that its program of spaying feral cats meets the requirements for exemption based on “public health and safety” because feral cats can infect humans with toxoplasmosis. There is not one scintilla of evidence that feral cats are posing any significant incidence of toxoplasmosis, anywhere in Suffolk County. None. Toxoplasmosis is spread mostly by the consumption of insufficiently cooked meat. Feral cats are even less likely to infect humans than domestic cats, because they avoid human contact and there is no epidemiological evidence that even domestic cats present a significant human health threat due to spread of toxoplasmosis.

Kent’s Memorandum in Support is rife with conclusory assertions which are utterly unsupportable, in fact. Counsel states, “It is well established that the growing feral cat population poses a threat to the public health and safety to the residents of the Town of Riverhead.” No such evidence is supplied.

The percentage of feral cats neutered at Kent represents only a tiny fraction of the feral cats at large on Long Island. A Newsday account cites an estimated 1,000 feral cat colonies in Suffolk County containing a dozen to 30 felines. The Town of Riverhead Sense of the Board Resolution declares Kent claims to spay or neuter just 150 animals including dogs and an additional 150 domestic and feral cats per year. Most spaying and neutering procedures are done on a fee-for-service basis and involve domestic animals. Thus, the expanded Kent facility would have no perceptible impact on feral cat populations. The American Bird Conservancy told us that the Kent spaying and neutering program “won’t make a difference because the feral cat population is so high that a trap-neuter-release program can’t even maintain existing populations, let alone reduce them.” If Kent quadrupled the number of feral cats it neuters, the population of feral cats would continue to rise geometrically. The Kent claim is without merit and is merely a deceit aimed at obtaining a hardship for which Kent is unqualified. It is obvious that this public health scare is nothing but a hook to the Public Health exemption being used by Kent to obtain a proscribed hardship waiver.

Even if this claim were true, there is no showing that such spaying can only be provided in the Core Preservation Area of the Pine Barrens. Facilities of this sort are permitted under zoning in all three Pine Barrens towns. The spaying service can be provided outside the protected Core Preservation Area.

Mr. Goode also argues that Kent helps prevent rabies. He acknowledges that there have only been two cases of rabies on Long Island and that they came from raccoons.

Finally, development in the Core Preservation Area of the Pine Barrens was prohibited in large measure to protect underlying groundwater which is the purest on Long Island. Currently, the Island faces the largest public health threat ever as the result of the precipitous decline in water quality demonstrated recently by the massive fish and turtle die-off. So, public health and safety are much better served by ensuring continued protection of the Core Preservation Area of the Pine Barrens than by permitting expansion of the Kent Animal Shelter in the Core, when such expansion can be accomplished elsewhere.

Claims of Environmental Improvement
Yet, Mr. Goode insists the Kent facility will improve water quality. The wastewater system proposed merely meets the minimum standards required by government and its distance from the river only delays, not prevents contamination. Kent cannot demonstrate that re-location and upgrading of its septic systems will result in improved water quality. The increased intensity of use itself would double the contaminants entering groundwater. That Suffolk County or the New York State DEC is still giving permits for development that contaminates our drinking water and surface water is no argument for more and bigger cesspools. Our groundwater has been so bad that we’re witnessing closed beaches and shellfish beds, fish and turtle kills and harmful algae blooms Island-wide. It’s so bad the Suffolk County is committed to eliminating some 350,000 cesspools, county-wide even as Kent proposes adding a new and bigger one. Most important of all, there is no basis in the law for granting a Core Preservation Area Extreme Hardship exemption on the basis of “environmental improvement” real or imagined.

The Society’s Concern
Mr. Goode’s characterization of the Pine Barrens Society as a “special interest group” or my efforts to protect water quality and open space as a ”self interest” are both mean-spirited and wrong. The Pine Barrens Society is the opposite of a “special interest” and is, instead a “public interest group,” working for the public at large, not some narrow pecuniary interest. And my working toward these same goals is not a “self interest.” Given the degree of personal attacks, my “self interest” would be to stop trying to find another site for Kent and let water quality be damned.

A greater danger than asking Kent to build their new facility outside the Core Preservation Area (possibly on land supplied by one of the Pine Barrens towns) would be to abuse the clear intent and language of the law by approving the Kent application and thus, opening the door for other developers to abuse the Pine Barrens Act for their purposes. That is our greatest concern.

If the Kent extraordinary hardship waiver is granted
Could a CVS Pharmacy qualify for a Core Area hardship? It provides items used for health or safety! How about a county health clinic? Or maybe a 250-bed assisted living complex? It’s clear that merely because a facility claims to provide for the public health and safety, that is not a basis for the granting of a Core Preservation Area Extraordinary Hardship Waiver. To qualify, that service must be supplied by government or other public agency (and we believe no public health service is being offered in this application
anyway) but any qualifying public health or safety need would have to show that such service cannot be provided anywhere but in the Core Preservation Area of the Pine Barrens. Obviously, this is not the case here.

We are not asking the Pine Barrens Commissioners to thumb their noses at cute little animals. Instead, we are asking them to defend the law, protect the Island’s purest water supply and disapprove the Kent application because it does not meet the requirements for an Extraordinary Hardship and its approval would create a bad precedent for future Core Preservation Area applications.

Further, I think that you’ll be doing Kent no favor by approving the hardship, knowing that the matter will be litigated and that there is a high likelihood that the courts will overturn the approval and that the applicant may be forced to take down its construction, if any.

The Pine Barrens Act allows the Commission to waive strict compliance with the Act in approving hardship waivers in the Compatible Growth Area, but not in the Core. However the Commission would like to accommodate the Kent Animal Shelter, it has no discretion, basis or authority for granting it an “Extraordinary Hardship” waiver. To grant such a waiver would undermine the most fundamental intent of the Pine Barrens Protection Act.

We are asking that the Pine Barrens Commissioners meet their responsibility under the law, to deny the Core Preservation Extraordinary Hardship Waiver, then help Kent find a suitable location elsewhere, to provide its useful service. What’s selfish or unreasonable about that?

Richard Amper is the executive director of the L.I. Pine Barrens Society, which has its office in downtown Riverhead. He lives in Ridge with his wife Robin and their dachshund Oscar.

Editor’s note: The “In MY Opinion” column is open to anyone who wants to submit a viewpoint on any topic. The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the point of view of RiverheadLOCAL’s publishers. We welcome submissions. Be sure to include your email address and daytime phone number. Click here to submit your opinion.

Correction: Due to an editing error, this column was originally published under an incorrect byline.