Mahackeno Now

Another (and hopefully final) act in the application epic is coming to an end. The Planning and Zoning Commission will soon conclude its hearings on the Westport Weston Family Y’s application to build a new facility at Camp Mahackeno.

I think it is important to remember – as the P&Z process winds to a close – that the Family Y has shown time and time again that Mahackeno poses no threat to the environment.

• In 2006, the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection gave tentative approval to build a wastewater facility at Mahackeno.

• In 2006, the Westport Flood and Erosion Control Board approved the Family Y’s application to build at Mahackeno.

• In 2007, the Westport Conservation Commission approved the Family Y’s application to build at Mahackeno.

• In August 2007, Connecticut DEP Commissioner Gina McCarthy gave final approval for a wastewater treatment facility at Mahackeno.

The Family Y’s opponents repeatedly challenged all of these approvals, trying to overturn them. In August 2007, the Representative Town Meeting upheld the Westport commissions. The DEP approval was challenged twice and both times it was upheld after an administrative appeal.

Most recently, the Y’s opponents demanded that the DEP clarify how the new Aquifer Protection Area Program regulations would affect the Y’s Mahackeno project. The DEP replied that even though a small portion of Camp Mahackeno is within the Canal Street Well Field, the Y’s proposed new facility would not violate the new Aquifer Protection regulations. (The building will be sufficiently far from the well field.)

As in the past, the DEP’s reply was not good enough for some Y opponents. Edward Lerner – an attorney who represents Arthur Cohen – demanded that the DEP investigate Westport and possibly revoke the town’s authority to implement the Aquifer Protection Program. At the end of May, my former boss, DEP Commissioner Gina McCarthy, told Mr. Lerner that, “The Department sees no benefit in considering program revocation and would, in fact, see it as counter productive to achieving our goal of protecting Connecticut’s groundwater resources for use as drinking water supplies.”

As a former employee of the DEP, I am appalled by the attempts to muddy the Family Y’s application that is now before the P&Z. How can you claim to be an environmentalist one month, and the next insist the DEP revoke Westport’s authority to protect our drinking water?

By now, I think it is obvious that there are no “real” environmental reasons to prevent the Family Y from building its project at Mahackneo. And I think it’s clear that those ardent opponents who continue to argue that Mahackeno will damage the environment must have ulterior motives.

That’s why I hope the P&Z ignores all the recent environmental hype and approves the application for the new Family Y at Mahackeno. Doing so will do more for the environment than giving in to those who have hijacked the environmental movement.

The Westport Representative Town Meeting (RTM) on Tuesday (6/3) failed to vote on discontinuing Sunny Lane even though the RTM’s Planning and Zoning Committee urged the entire body to do so. Instead, after a 45-minute discussion of the issue, the RTM voted to adjourn without finishing the agenda for its monthly meeting. (Click to read the article in the Westport News.)

The Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard Law School has noticed that Amy Ancel (RTM District 3) threatened to sue Westport residents Adrian Bowles and Ronald Wimer. (Click to read entry from March.)

The Harvard Citizen Media Law Project opened a file on Ms. Ancel’s threat. Click to read it.

The Westport Weston Family Y on Monday (6/2) withdrew its application to the Planning and Zoning Commission for a special permit to build a new facility at Camp Mahackeno. The Family Y then immediately refiled its application, allowing the clock to be reset.

The Planning and Zoning Commission on Monday was due to close public hearings on the Family Y’s application. However, the Y was unable to get the Town of Westport to abandon a road on Mahackeno before the June 2nd deadline. The Representative Town Meeting is due to debate and vote on the abandonment on Tuesday, June 3rd.

Click to read more on Westport Now.

On Thursday (5/29) the Aquarion Water Company said that the Westport Weston Family Y’s proposed waste water treatment facility at Mahackeno will “not pose a significant risk to the public drinking water supply and would not jeopardize the health of our customers.”

Click to read the letter by Brian Roach, Aquarion’s supervisor of environmental protection.

On Tuesday (5/27) the Westport Zoning Board of Appeals granted three variances to the Westport Weston Family Y’s project at Camp Mahackeno.
The board members were not swayed by Matthew Mandell (RTM District 1) and his monkey math.

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Just before the Memorial Day weekend, Matthew Mandell (RTM District 1) sent an e-mail to fans and constituents claiming that he had been called a racist. (Click to read the entire message.)

Public comment is over in P&Z and the opposition to the Mahackeno proposal did a spectacular job. Citizens from all across Westport and neighboring Norwalk did their homework and gave clear and concise reasons why the YMCA does not meet the regulations and special permit. The information and analysis presented was overwhelming. The burden of proof is always the applicant’s and they will be hard pressed to overcome what has been put into the record. I have faith our commissioners will weigh all the information fairly and come out with the only conclusion left, to deny this inappropriate proposal.

As a sign of some Mahackeno supporters’ fear of this outcome, they lashed out at me on-line [sic], calling me, of all things, a racist for saying the YMCA buying up of all the Sunny Lane properties was blockbusting. I would normally ignore such drivel, but this I find offensive. It seems when these obviously mean spirited people have nothing else to say they resort to slurs and character assassination, such integrity.

The YMCA is using their non profit status [sic] to buy up every residential property in this small neighborhood to pave them over for parking. Scared residents fearing they will be surrounded by this huge commercial facility have sold. Whether it is zone busting, commercial intimidation or blockbusting, it is the destruction of a residential neighborhood at the hands of a corporate entity. The Town Plan says Westport should protect its residential neighborhoods and so does common sense.

Obviously these blog thugs, too yellow to come out from behind their anonymity, chose to harp about a single word I said at P&Z because they obviously have no answer for the other 5,000 words I spoke the night before.

Nobody affiliated with the Westport Weston Family Y has ever called Mr. Mandell a racist. But this blog — which is edited by the Water Rat Parents Club — did point out that Mr. Mandell uses racially charged language when he criticizes the Family Y’s project at Camp Mahackeno. (See the entry below.)

Did Mr. Mandell apologize for his racially charged criticism of the Family Y? No. He simply turned to another page in his divisive politics playbook and tried to kneecap the messenger.

Mr. Mandell: We at the Water Rat Parents Club — and Mahackeno supporters in general — are not blog thugs because we think it is repugnant to use the word “blockbust.”

However, you were correct when you said in your e-mail that we had no answer to your speech to the Planning and Zoning Commission. We didn’t understand most of it, but we were not alone. It seems that the commissioners didn’t either.

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On Tuesday (5/20) Gary Dufel, a principal with the Trumbul-based engineering firm Sterns & Wheler, said that the Family Y’s waste water septic system will not have a significant impact on Lees Pond.

Mr. Dufel, who designed Westport’s new waste water treatment plant, was hired as a consultant by the Planning and Zoning Commission.

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I read recently that Y Downtown gave the Planning and Zoning Commission a petition, which opposes the Westport Weston Family Y’s proposed new facility at Camp Mahackeno. I signed that petition in 2005, when I thought there was still a chance that the Family Y might build a new home on town-owned land.

Like many in Westport, I once preferred that the Westport Weston Family Y move to Baron’s South. But that is no longer possible given that the town built the Senior Center in the middle of the property. Since I signed the Y Downtown petition three years ago, I have learned that no downtown land will ever be available to the Family Y. First Selectman Gordon Joseloff has said that he will never give or sell land to the Family Y. (Given that the Y Downtown petition is more than three years old, I suspect it lists many people who have changed their minds on the Mahackeno issue.)

The town’s reluctance to enter into a public-private partnership with the Family Y forced it to seek another solution. After years of looking for a suitable location, the Y leadership decided to build at Mahackeno on land that the Y has owned since World War II. This proposed new facility – which is now before the P&Z – will use only six of the campsite’s 32 acres. The vast majority of the camp will remain open space, with improved access for year-round recreational activities. Contrary to what some people say about the proposed septic system, the Family Y facility will not endanger the neighborhood. In fact, it will have a minimal impact on the environment, including Lee’s Pond, Poplar Plains Brook, the Saugatuck River and Long Island Sound. The septic system will be in strict compliance with all DEP codes and regulations. It will not discharge directly into the river, as is the case with the town’s wastewater treatment facility.

As a former employee of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection, I am annoyed by Y Downtown’s frequent criticism of the DEP. Connecticut has some of the strongest environmental protection laws in the country and the DEP is staffed with talented, diligent, and well-educated professionals. If Connecticut DEP Commissioner Gina McCarthy says that the Family Y project will not adversely affect our local environment, I believe her.

I also believe that people should be allowed to use their land as they wish as long as that use conforms to local and state regulations. I am appalled that Y Downtown continues to thwart the Westport Weston Family Y from building a new facility, which seems designed to conform to all of our planning, zoning and environmental regulations.

I no longer believe that it is feasible, or desirable, to keep the Westport Weston Family Y in downtown Westport. In fact, I proudly display two “Make Mahackeno” signs at each end of my front yard. That is why I recant my signature on the Y Downtown petition and I asked P&Z to redact my name from the official copy.

- Jose S. Villaluz III

On Tuesday (5/20), Matthew Mandell (RTM District 1) accused the Westport Weston Family Y of “blockbusting” the Mahackeno neighborhood.

Mr. Mandell made his comments after rushing to the podium to address Westport’s Planning and Zoning commissioners, who were hearing public comment on the Family Y’s application to build a new facility at Mahackeno.

Accusations of “blockbusting” have serious racial overtones. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “blockbusting” as, “profiteering by inducing property owners to sell hastily and often at a loss by appeals to fears of depressed values because of threatened minority encroachment.” The Encyclopedia of Chicago explains:

“Blockbusting” refers to the efforts of real-estate agents and real-estate speculators to trigger the turnover of white-owned property and homes to African Americans. Often characterized as “panic peddling,” such practices frequently accompanied the expansion of black areas of residence and the entry of African Americans into neighborhoods previously denied to them. In evidence as early as 1900, blockbusting techniques included the repeated—often incessant—urging of white homeowners in areas adjacent to or near black communities to sell before it became “too late” and their property values diminished. Agents frequently hired African American subagents and other individuals to walk or drive through changing areas soliciting business and otherwise behaving in such a manner as to provoke and exaggerate white fears. Purchasing homes cheaply from nervous white occupants, the panic peddler sold dearly to African Americans who faced painfully limited choices and inflated prices in a discriminatory housing market. Often providing financing and stringent terms to a captive audience, the blockbuster could realize substantial profits.

Is Mr. Mandell really afraid that a new Family Y at Mahackeno will lead to an influx of African Americans, or is he just using a racially charged word to create an undertone of fear? (If the latter, then he is acting like some of Barack Obama’s critics.)

Mr. Mandell may say that he didn’t mean to employ a racially charged word on live television. If that’s the case then he only has one defense: ignorance.

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