Remarks
Peter VanAvery
Public Meeting on Batchellerville Bridge
New York State Department of Transportation
Northville, N.Y.
August 11, 2001
I am Pete VanAvery ... seasonal resident of Edinburg for 50 years ... cofounder of the Batchellerville Bridge Action Committee ... owner of two sailboats.
I favor the low-bridge option. I favor building the new bridge to the north of the present structure.
Ever hear of a guy named Cozart Egleston? I'll bet you have even though you don't recognize the name. A few days ago, he was driving on the Northway when a car traveling in the opposite direction suddenly crossed the median, smashed into him, killed him. Now, if trees had been growing in that median, he might have been around today. But he's not. The reason we don't see a lot of trees on the median, and the reason you are seeing fewer trees along the Northway, is because DOT's experts view trees as, let me quote them, "lethal fixed objects" and are cutting them down.
Remember Mr. Egleston when you hear DOT experts like those here today perhaps reassure you that, yeah, a high arched bridge will be perfectly safe to cross in winter and in high winds, that, yeah, a high arched bridge will not be noisier than a lower structure, and that, no, we're not going to add to that curve south of Batchellerville although we are going to add a few hundred feet to it. You can figure that one out.
Now let's talk about marketing, shifty marketing. In this past year, we've received two publications from DOT showing lots and lots of pretty photo simulations of how the two bridge options would look. In all cases in the printed versions, the lake has always been "full": 768 feet above sea level. But as we know, and much to our grief, the lake is not a regular lake. It's a flood-control reservoir that drops typically 22 feet from June to the following late March. In my time, it's fallen as much as 33 feet. Well, let's stick to that 22 feet. In March, it fills up again. It is "full" for three or four weeks each year.
So that 43-foot-high bridge (that's the one I favor) is 43 feet high in June, but it becomes a 65-foot-high bridge in March. The other option, the big one, the 55-foot vertical clearance, starts out as 63 feet above water level in June. By March, it's 85 foot high above water level. That's as high as that balloon you see on the lawn outside. That's taller than an 8-story building and what I consider an environmental disaster for a nice Adirondack lake!
DOT's sailboat statistics also are inadequate. DOT claims that about 100 sailboats (that's a fraction of the thousands of boats on the lake) require a vertical clearance greater than 35 feet. But it does not say that it added four feet to each mast height to compensate for radio antennas and wave height. I view that as a questionable practice for a reservoir with a 22-foot annual drop in water level. Subtract that bogus four feet, and most would fit.
Finally, a message to Governor Pataki. Governor, now that you have launched an initiative to rescue the Hudson River from PCBs, how about launching an initiative to save Great Sacandaga Lake from your own Department of Transportation?