Archive: Opinions

I am afraid a lot of aspects regarding the sewer project are grossly misrepresented by the town of Lansing. First of all, the ‘development’ of land is by no means defined, limited or regulated by the fact if or if not the town of Lansing has (another) sewer or not.

What is defining the development in the town of Lansing is the Lansing Land Use Ordinance and this is where the true problem exists in our town. This Ordinance has been overdue for a revision for years and as it is written today and executed today is causing a lot of confusion and problems.  Want a simple example? Cargill’s new plans to move its mining operation up north to the new site close to Sweazey Road: The Land Use Ordinance states that mining operation is only envisioned in the Industrial/Research zone (that would be the political intent so to speak).

Furthermore, the town just approved the Moratorium on Heavy Industry last year which bans the heavy industry land (again clear political intent voiced) – but alas, because the Land Use Ordinance is poorly written, it looks like it does allow Cargill to move into an agricultural district. It’s hard to see how much ‘heavier’ an industry can get than mining and blasting, but what is worse and disturbing: This development has the town’s blessing (despite all the expressed intention elsewhere)!

Why do I mention Cargill ? Easy, because it turns out that Cargill Corp. is enabling the whole sewer project by ‘donating’ land downstream the sewer to house the processing facility. Does anyone truly think they do this without any gains? It just so happens that both the town and the Cargill company need something dearly, otherwise their respective operations are dead in the water. Cargill could not mine anymore and the sewer project would be dead on arrival, because there is no alternative to this particular location for a processing facility – surprisingly, all this is not an ethical issue for the town board, it regards it as business as usual.

As far as the arguments for the sewer go, they are mostly smokescreens. A private leach field is not a hygienic issue, neither is a sewer system any better for the environment. If this project would be so great for future developments, why is there no real cost-benefit analysis with hard facts and numbers? What is the return of investment of this system? Exactly in dollar per year calculated (estimated) for the next 20 years?

Instead we get a vague assumption of benefits further down the road in terms of an increased tax base (no one made the counter calculation of increased service demands of course), we are getting vague cost reductions of public buildings due to ‘savings’ in repairs (the respective managers should have calculated that up front – it’s called depreciation) and some general notion of being forward-looking and future-oriented – as if the status quo is necessarily wrong.

And to top it all off, this project is so badly financed that we have to bail out the town by increased taxes FOR ALL right from the get go. Not only is the cost for the people along the sewer line ridiculously high even with the bail out (connecting to it costs 6k to 10k, that’s the same cost for a leach field – even an engineered one), the fees for actual users are exceeding my leach field maintenance costs per year and because the finances don’t add up as an investment either– we all have to pay higher taxes to make up for it.

And the latest argument we heard is that the sewer will preserve the rest of Lansing as being an agricultural district. Well, I hate to repeat myself, but the Cargill story clearly demonstrates that the town does not care at all about the agricultural status. (Did anyone notice that the town presentation had the underline – Lansing: Home of Industry, Agriculture and Scenic Beauty. Well, I am glad we have our priorities straight!). Neither does the sewer project prevent anything, only a well thought-off Land Use Ordinance could do that, if, well, if there would be any interest of the town to actually update it and make it a protector of the land….which there is no desire at this time as stated by Mrs. Miller in a discussion I had with her late last year.

So, this leaves me wondering, who is actually benefiting from this whole thing? Clearly it’s not the community, so who is? Well, just the other day I browsed the real estate section of Craigslist and guess what I found: an advertisement for a prime land in Lansing already approved for development (!) with ‘city water and soon to be sewer…’.

Dan, you are calling me a naysayer in your editorial and your arguments go along the line of me being backwards-oriented and a person not wanting any change at all… nothing could be further from the truth. I am just a(nother) person who prefers projects to be clearly defined, ethically planned, well financed and important enough for the community to be worthwhile carrying the risk of becoming total failures.

Daniel Eikel
Lansing, NY

v9i18