Industrial developer NorthPoint will be required to analyze potential cumulative impacts of the proposed 641,000-square foot Riverhead Logistics Center on local roads, air quality, water supply and wastewater management in its draft environmental impact statement, under a final scoping statement on the Planning Board’s agenda for discussion and a vote Thursday. See proposed final scope below.
Proposed revisions to the draft scoping statement were made following public comments made during a public scoping session held by the Planning Board Sept. 1 and Sept. 15, and submitted during the written comment period that ran through Sept. 26. Both meetings had a strong turnout of residents who urged the Planning Board to require a more in-depth analysis than would have been required by the draft scope submitted by the developer.
If the final scope on the board’s agenda is adopted, the draft environmental impact statement will be expanded in the following ways:
The DEIS will be required to collect traffic data during peak times on adjacent roadways in both summer and fall, as well as intersection turning movement counts at 13 area intersections, in addition to the two intersections proposed for data collection in the draft scoping statement prepared by the applicant.
The DEIS must also discuss the use of the proposed facility as a distribution (or logistics) center and must identify if trip generation data for warehousing is accurate given the rise of “e-commerce” warehousing and distribution.
“Traffic data from other e-commerce warehouses and last mile distribution facilities recently constructed in the Nassau/Suffolk County area must be included in order to determine whether or not ‘warehouse’ trip generation data accurately reflects the proposed traffic impacts from the operation of the site,” the proposed final scope states.
In addition, the DEIS must include seasonal data from other e-commerce warehouses, “in order to understand seasonally driven changes in traffic levels, i.e., during holiday season where e-commerce would be expected to increase, summer time when population levels on the east end of Long Island increase.”
The DEIS will be required to discuss paths of travel for vehicles traveling from the logistics center to points east.
The draft impact statement will also be required to analyze cumulative increased demands for water supply, including the impacts of multiple water district extensions throughout town to support new residential and industrial users, the impacts of cumulative sanitary wastewater management, and the cumulative traffic impacts with other pending developments or project sites.
A more extensive analysis than proposed in the draft scope of air quality impacts resulting from idling vehicles on site as well as vehicles traveling on local roadways.
A more extensive analysis of noise impacts resulting from the operation of the facility will also be required.
The developer will be required to make full disclosure of any additional sites in the Town of Riverhead that it has purchased, or is in negotiations to purchase.
A resolution adopting the final scope is on the agenda for discussion and a vote at Thursday’s Planning Board meeting, which is scheduled to begin at 6 p.m. at Riverhead Town Hall.
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