Riverhead Town has landed another $150,000 to help it complete a biking/hiking trail at the Calverton Enterprise Park.
State Senator Ken LaValle was able to obtain the additional funding.
“I am pleased that we were able to obtain additional state funds to help complete the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial Trail at EPCAL,” LaValle said. “It was a high priority item for the town, and I know it will be a great asset to the community and will be well utilized by residents.”
LaValle previously procured a $200,000 grant and Suffolk County kicked in $200,000 as well.
Councilwoman Jodi Giglio, town board liaison to the alternative transportation committee, who has spearheaded the EPCAL trail project for the town, said the additional state funding will go a long way toward finishing the rest of the 8.9 mile trail that loops around the former Grumman site.
The goal is to get the whole thing paved, Giglio said.
Most of the trail — once used by security vehicles to patrol the former military aircraft manufacturing plant — is already paved. The town has paved a three-mile stretch of an unpaved portion of the path so far.
But funding for the materials and work to be done is not the only thing standing in the way of getting the trail completed.
There’s disagreement on the board about what to do with one section of the path — Line Road — that cuts across land that was included within two lots on the proposed EPCAL subdivision map and crosses the southwest corner of the 7,000-foot runway. Some of Line Road is paved and needs maintenance work, which Riverhead Highway Superintendent Gio Woodson has offered to complete. Some of it needs a base layer and pavement.
The councilwoman and members of the town’s alternative transportation committee have advocated changing the subdivision lot lines so that the path remains on town-owned land. She has also been pushing to have all of Line Road surfaced and included in the biking/hiking trail.
“Line Road needs to be a cutoff for people who can’t make it all the way around the whole site,” Giglio said. “It leads right up to the parking lot. “But Sean said he wants to sell it,” she said, referring to the town supervisor.
“The difference of opinion is not between the councilwoman and me,” Supervisor Sean Walter said in an interview. “She and the town board have a difference of opinion, not she and I. The town board adopted the subdivision map.”
“When and if those lots are developed, the bike path would have to be put around the perimeter of the lots,” Walter said. Both are large lots. One is 20.6 acres and the other is 276.3 acres.
Giglio, along with members of the alternative transportation committee and cycling enthusiasts, say a biking/hiking trail around the perimeter of the enterprise park would be a unique gem that would attract tourists and local residents alike as an environment for exercise in an environment that’s safe, scenic and environmentally significant.
“It’s so beautiful back here,” she said on a recent tour of the trail.
She said a local resident who’s an Eagle Scout wants to build a kiosk for the trail head that would contain a map of the trail along with a description of the fauna and flora that may be viewed along the trail.
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