An open letter from Susan Mancuso

Over the past few months, I have been honored to hold conversations with you on your doorsteps, in your living rooms, and on the street. I have learned about many issues that you care about: making Town roads safer for walkers and bikers; working with the Village to support merchants providing a wider range of goods affordable to more people; making it easier for people to catch up on their property tax bills; providing better options for seniors and others to get around town; offering a wider range of programs at Town Park; actually charging and collecting — when applicable — the $4000 per lot fee that is earmarked for the Recreation Department when the Town approves new building lots (somehow this has fallen through the cracks); and improving training and retention of employees in positions with high turnover.

One question posed to me that has been circulating very recently concerns hospitality. It goes something like this: if you are in favor of new hospitality, then why did you oppose the hospitality law that the Town adopted in 2024?

In the aftermath of the outcry from the 2021 Migdale proposal — a large development with a hotel, residential subdivision, and glamping — the Town undertook a multi-year process to study how hotel-type uses could be incorporated into the Town’s Comprehensive Plan — which contains the Town’s goals and guiding principles for future development. The Town surveyed Town/Village residents to determine the types of hospitality they desired and where they desired it, commissioned a hospitality study, and updated the Town’s Comprehensive Plan.

The culmination of this effort was the adoption last year of the Town’s hospitality law.

This new hotel law is probably the Town Board’s most significant initiative in at least a decade. This could have been a crowning achievement for the Town Board, providing the kind of hospitality that the public sought, adding to the vibrancy and livability of our community. But instead our Town zoning code is now burdened with a deeply flawed law that, to date, has yielded the prospect of exactly zero new hotel rooms.

As detailed below, I strongly opposed this law. But it was not, as some have claimed, that I oppose hospitality in the Town. As a business owner, a member of the Millbrook Business Association Board of Directors, and a member of its Farmers and Makers Market Advisory Committee, I strongly support local business and initiatives that contribute to the vitality of our business community and our community as a whole. I opposed this law because this law concentrates the most intensive development the Town allows in areas that could significantly endanger the Town and Village water supply.

Site Selection.

The new Town law designates three sites for hotel development: the former Cottonwood Hotel / Millbrook Training Center (Location 1), the former Daytop site (Location 2), and 7 lots on the south side of Route 343, between Halcyon Road and Old Route 82 (Location 3) (see below).

The Town and Village Natural Resource Inventory states that “[a]ll residents of Washington and Millbrook rely on groundwater for their drinking water, making the abundance, safety, and protection of water an issue of vital importance.”(p. 35.)

What is groundwater? It’s the water located below ground in spaces between sand, sediments and bedrock formations. NRI, p.35.

For Village residents and businesses, drinking is water is provided as a municipal utility, where the Village collects shallow groundwater at a central point (supplemented by some surface water from Shaw and Mill Brook), treats it, and distributes it through a system of pipes to users. Town residents and businesses obtain water on the property where they are located, by drilling wells to access groundwater beneath the land’s surface.  

Groundwater gets replenished by rain and snow permeating the land surface to the water table, the below-surface point where groundwater collects. The depth of the water table and the quantity of water available can vary greatly from site to site within the Town. How much and how quickly precipitation can be added to our groundwater depends on the type and configuration of soil, rocks and bedrock.

The Natural Resource Inventory classifies Town land into three zones according to its hydrogeologic characteristics. Zone 1 is called the primary recharge zone. Zone 1 sites contain permeable sand and gravel deposits, which allow precipitation to infiltrate directly from the surface to the aquifer (groundwater). This land is a primary conduit for replenishing groundwater. But the rapid permeability of Zone 1 land also makes water contamination more likely than in the other zones. It is therefore extremely important that Zone 1 locations be studied very closely before permitting development and disturbance of the land.

Two of the three districts the Town Board designated for hotel development — the Cottonwood/Millbrook Training Center (Site 1) and the Bennett/ Route 343 site (Site 3) are located in Zone 1, denoted in green in the NRI map below. (pp. 36, 49).  

Town Aquifer/ Water Supply Resources Map

According to the NRI, “Zone 1 water can infiltrate directly from the surface to the aquifer, carrying contaminants with it. . . . Therefore it is important to identify and act on threats to aquifers to ensure a steady supply of groundwater that can be used as clean drinking water.” (p.36).

The Conservation Advisory Commission weighed in on this law, expressing strong concerns about the locations of these hospitality projects on sites that are critical in serving the Town and Village water supply.

The Town Board failed to consider the impacts of allowing intensive development on this vital Town resource. The Board said it could not address this issue without a specific plan. Nevertheless, the Board greenlit 20- to 40-room hotel projects on these sites, leaving this mess for the Planning Board in the future.

Flooding at Cottonwood and Bennett Sites.

The flooding problems in the Bennett location are known to many in the area, and Town officials have documented this hazard.  In 2016, the County published a Hazard Mitigation Plan, with data provided to it from the County’s municipalities. The Town reported a “history of past flooding issues on Route 343 and Old Route 82.” It further noted that “[f]our residential homes located on Rt. 343 and 92, and Old Rt 82 experienced property and structural damage during various storm events.” (See, pages 4 and 8).

The Daytop USDA Soil Survey report states that this site  is also impacted with soils with limited (yellow) to very limited (red) septic absorption capability.

The limitations of Daytop’s soils is well-known to the Town, with a documented history of sewage surface discharge going back at least 50 years.

In 1973, for example, the Dutchess County Health Commissioner ordered Daytop to construct a new sewage system.

In 1988, the Millbrook Village engineer advised the Millbrook Village Board of Trustees, which then included Mayor Gary Ciferri, that Daytop wanted to tap into the Village’s sewer system. The engineer noted that site use was “already operating beyond the capacity of its existing septic system.”

A Dutchess County Health Department engineer reported to the Village Board that the Daytop septic system had a permit only because it was an existing facility.  The County engineer cited the soils on site as the problem for septic, “mak[ing] it difficult to treat the waste through normal soil leaching and, therefore, the Health Department would not approve any enlargement of the facility.”

And Town records for the Daytop parcel contain a 2000 County Health Department Report, where department officials, dispatched to the Daytop site, observed that “partially treated sewage was discharging to the surface of the ground,” in violation of the Dutchess County Sanitary Code.  

HOS Location 2: Daytop — Pumphouse for Off-site Water Supply

The Town Board appears to never have considered this issue.

Other Issues.