Dear Town Planning and Zoning Commssion:

Once again the meeting rules changed and because we have an intervenor we were not allowed our right to speak.

Planning and Zoning, May 8, 2012

Your home should be a place where you are safe, where you go to relax. It is the biggest investment you will make in your life. I am here to speak about how it is up to you, the members of this board, to consider everyone in this equation.

The town long ago made the erroneous decision to zone the property, 105 International Drive, industrial, feet away from a residential zone. It compounded the issue by adding more homes, Winterwood, to the equation years later. Two mistakes do not beget yet another.

Day Hill Road is the business area and it is an area to be proud of. The planning for the area is clear to see. It is a place of pride and it is a pretty area. There are setbacks for the businesses, the grounds are maintained. Every planned agrea gets that consideration of a setback to be sure that two areas that area zoned differently will have buffers to co-exist... with the exception apparently of this one.

We heard in prior meetings there was chlordane and dieldren on the property. As soon as we requested testing, lo and behold there is a non-disclosure agreement. Then there is testing for only chlordane and dieldren, nothing else to include the over fertilizing of the property since the banning of chlordane and dieldren and nothing about the by-product arsenic, for example. Then after call after call to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), asking for them to con in to tes, and with a non-disclosure agreement apparently in force, the DEEP shows up to say the testing is within limits — not severe limits, whatever that means. They reviewed the tests that Dollar Tree submitted for what Dollar Tree wanted to test for. There were no independent tests done.

Now the remedy to save wetlands and to heck with people is to take the highest concentrations of the contaminant and put them where the building will be, 100 feet from my home. My husband and I would be subjected to the highest levels of the contaminants for the time it takes to build this building. They claim this will be nine weeks. We sincerely doubt this timeframe. We also do not understand how this commission can consider putting us at risk such as this for nine hours knowingly, nevermind nine weeks or more.

The berm to be built in front of our home will have plastic sheeting it it to keep the contaminants in. Trees are to be planted on the berms. Trees have roots and if roots grow through concrete, they are going to grow through this so-called barrier. The contaminants should be trucked to a secure/lined landfill and clean dirt, and proof it s clean dirt, should be brought in.

The entire area should be kept soaked until the contaminated dirt is removed and replaced with clean dirt.

The berms need to be 14-feet high. This is the height to be built at the intersection of Stone and Winterwood,. It certainly needs to be that high 250 feet in front of a home. No one wants to look at the site. It would also serve as a sound barrier to 160 trucks 24/7 and would help to diffuse the ambient light. Nothing will prevent the diesel fumes form the area that would affect the air quality for the neighborhood.

All traffic can and should enter/exit International Drive. They have said they cannot mix cars and trucks, then put up jersey barriers to separate them on the back side of the building. Do away with or move the 16 truck bays facing Stone Road. No one but Walgreens has gotten the exception for truck bays on the front of a building in Windsor, and Walgreens faces Pepsi, not a neighborhood. Florescent lighting for their sign needs to be on International Drive as well.

I watched a video of Planning and Zoning from last April where (Chairwoman) Mips told Mr. Lally that the Griffin dirt at the other end of Stone Road had to be moved by the end of the year as those neighbors deserved to go into their yards in the summer time and not be bothered by the dust and trucks. It was moved... to 911 — we are dealing with that mess as well.

Ms. Mips, we deserve to have a quality of life as well. I believe we have a legal right to keep Dollar Tree from dumping concentrated contaminants 100 feet from our home, we deserve to be able to sleep with our windows open without the noise of brakes and trucks gearing up and down, back up beepers from trucks and fork lifts, people making noise at their break area right outside our window, trucks picking up and dropping trailers. 

We deserve to have fresh air come in our windows, not carcinogenic diesel fumes. They have said that the cooling for the facility will be a fan that will draw air in from the back and blow the hot air from the facility at the homes across the street. We deserve to experience night time, not perpetual daylight from the ambient light — hood or not the area will be lit up. We deserve to sell our homes at a profit, not lose money on them.

There has been no real consideration by the Fortune 500 company to make it right for the neighbors. To put such a monstrosity in the neighborhood, there should be proper sized berms, clean land, sound proofing done to the homes that abut it such as triple pane windows, doors, insulation and central air to keep out the noise and diesel.

There has been much said about the fact that this property is zoned industrial. Again, it appears there was a terrible mistake made by the Town once upon a time to place it right next to residential. Don't compound the error. A much smaller facility can come to this site and be built closer to International Drive with the proper buffer between the two. It is a desirable site and Dollar Tree is not the only one that would ever be interested in it.

Catherine Cicero