Revision of history
County
Executive Steve Levy in the
article "Another round involving
Trap & Skeet" again is making
several statements about the
Trap & Skeet that are not true.
The first is that "he inherited
a Trap & Skeet program from a
previous administration." What
he fails to mention is that the
Request for Proposal which Mr.
Wroobel responded to was issued
in May of 2005, when Mr. Levy
was in office. All the
resolutions passed by the County
Legislature allocating money for
the range (Resolution 277/278 in
2004, Resolutions 1375/1376 in
2004 and Resolutions 1266/1267
in 2005) providing $800,000 for
noise moderation, environmental
restoration and other
improvements were: 1) introduced
by the presiding officer at the
request of Levy; and 2) were
signed and approved by Steve
Levy himself. Are these the
actions of someone who had no
involvement with the reopening
of this range?
Our civic
association never asked Levy
"for money for noise abatement."
Actually, the Suffolk County
Parks Department went before the
Pine Barrens Commission in
December 2004 for a noise wall
and the cost was $395,000. This
is the same figure used by Mark
Wroobel in his proposal to the
county. Not sure where Levy got
the $1 million figure. What the
civic did ask of the county
executive was that he work with
us to find a solution to the
noise problem, to meet with the
community, and was there any
possibility that the range could
be relocated. To this day, Levy
has never met with the community
and is spending thousands of
dollars of taxpayers’ money to
fight the town in court over the
numerous noise violations given
to the range.
Johan
McConnell, president
South
Yaphank Civic Association
Trap
& Skeet misrepresentation
I write in
response to the factually
incorrect letter from Dan Aug,
director of communications for
County Executive Steve Levy. In
the early fall of 2005, 10
members of the South Yaphank
Civic Association attended a
meeting with Levy to discuss our
concerns about what we
considered quality of life
issues in the Yaphank area. I
was at that meeting, not Mr.
Aug, so I’m not sure how he
knows what was said or not said.
Two of the
concerns expressed by the
members were: 1) the re-opening
of the Trap & Skeet Range; and
2) the planned development of
the Yaphank County Property.
Levy was asked by one of the
members, "What is happening with
the Trap & Skeet Range?" as the
range had been closed since
October 2001. This closing was
approved by the parks
commissioner at the time and the
county executive, not the county
legislature. Levy responded that
he "would not spend any more
money on the range until there
was an agreement between the
town and the county concerning
the noise issue." The county
executive re-opened the range
knowing that the community
opposed it and that it would
violate Brookhaven Town Noise
Ordinance.
If Mr. Aug
had done his homework by reading
Suffolk County documents and
minutes of various meetings, he
would know that one of the
reasons for closing the range
was the noise complaints from
the community. It appears that
it is Mr. Aug who is
misrepresenting what was said at
the meeting, not Ms. O’Brien.
John
McConnell
Yaphank
Move
trap and skeet range
In the
article, "Another round
involving Trap & Skeet," it was
stated by the range’s licensee,
Mark Wroobel, that there’s no
contamination. Yet in November
2008, Adrienne Esposito,
executive director of the
Citizen’s Campaign for the
Environment and current member
of the Suffolk County Planning
Commission, wrote a letter to
Peter Scully, chairman of the
Pine Barrens Commission,
stating: "The soil and water
testing
clearly indicates that there is
significant lead contamination
in the surrounding area. Closing
the facility is the first step
to stopping further lead
contamination. CCE would urge
the Pine Barrens Commission and
the Department of Environmental
Conservation to act swiftly to
close the trap and skeet
facility in Southaven County
Park and to formulate a
remediation plan that protects
human health and the surrounding
environment."
Additionally, groundwater
testing in the area between the
range and the Carmans River in
2007 and 2008 showed elevated
levels of arsenic, which is used
in the production of lead shot.
We have all of this in writing.
Regarding
noise, County Executive Steve
Levy is quoted as saying: "I
said I first wanted a written
statement from the town that
they would not challenge the
Trap & Skeet facility before I
invested money for (noise)
abatement. The town never gave
us that assurance and have been
trying to close us down." What
Mr. Levy actually said to myself
and six of my fellow residents
at a meeting in his office in
September 2005 was that he
wouldn’t "spend a penny on the
range" until an agreement was
reached with the town about the
noise issue. Yet despite no such
agreement, Mr. Levy has already
spent over $400,000 on the range
to date and is wasting tens of
thousands more fighting the very
noise law that he said needed to
be resolved before he’d spend
any money on the range at all.
Later in the article, Parks
Commissioner John Pavacic
attempted to make it seem as if
steps were taken to address the
noise problem by saying
"shooting stations closest to
Gerard Road were oriented in
such a way so that the noise
sound from the firearm was
projected to the east" and
"sound absorbing panels were
placed on the inside of separate
partitions from top to bottom
and there were berms to help
minimize the noise."
Those
"shooting stations" have always
pointed east; if they pointed
west, they’d be shooting at
passing cars and the houses
across the street. As for the
berms, there aren’t any, nor
have there ever been any and
after the "sound absorbing
panels" were installed, the
town’s independent noise
consultant recorded the highest
decibel noise readings ever
measured, so those panels are
worthless.
Why does
the county insist on spending so
much time trying to "prove a
negative" when it would be so
much simpler to just admit that
reopening the range here in
Yaphank was a bad idea and that
it simply needs to be somewhere
else?
John
Palasek, chairman
Trap and
Skeet Committee of the South
Yaphank Civic Association
