Oppose Drumlin Fields Office Complex 
Oppose Drumlin Fields Office Complex
Five Minutes to Help Save the Pine Bush
No matter where you live, please, call an Alderman about Drumlin Fieldsby Lynne Jackson
Drumlin Fields is a proposed office complex to be built on both sides of Rapp Road in the Pine Bush. Bordered on the north and east by Six Mile Waterworks, this 46 acre development would effectively cut-off Six Mile Waterworks ecologically from the remaining preserve.
Ice Age Associates is asking the Albany Common Council to rezone this land from residential to commercial. The Common Council will probably vote on accepting the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) at their meeting on Monday, December 7. After accepting the FEIS, the Common Council would be able to vote on the re-zoning as early as December 21.
This proposed development would have many negative impacts on the Pine Bush. There is one over-riding issue for this development: are there or are there not enough acres of Pine Bush preserved for the ecosystem to survive?
The Albany Pine Bush Management Commission has determined in their Implementation Guidelines that a viable preserve for the Pine Bush must be 3,950 acres in size. According to the Commission, only 2300 have been purchased for Preserve and of those, only 1700 are fire-manageable. On the other hand, the developer, Ice Age Associates, has determined that the Preserve is large enough, and has in it 2061 fire-manageable acres in preserve.
The Commission is adamant in its comments that the preservation of Drumlin Fields is essential for the survival of the Pine Bush. The developer actually states in the FEIS that building an office complex called Drumlin Fields will be more beneficial to the Preserve and the future of the Pine Bush ecosystem than leaving the land as in its current state! Though the Commission and the developer have both submitted scientific documents to support their respective positions, the Commission’s documents represent thousands of hours of research by independent scientists, and the developer’s short reports were produced by companies hired by the developer.
If the Common Council accepts the developer’s FEIS as complete, then the Common Council would be making the developer’s document its own, thus accepting the conclusion that enough land has been preserved. This could have disastrous consequences for the Pine Bush.
Give Save the Pine Bush a holiday present &emdash; call your alderman, or, if you don’t know who your alderman is or live outside of Albany, but still want to see this land preserved, call the 15th Ward Pine Bush Alderman, Nicholas Coluccio at 489-5925 (or write him at 4 Brookland Ave., Albany, 12203). Calling and letting Mr. Coluccio know your position on Drumlin Fields will make a difference!
(To find out who your alderman is, call City Hall at 434-5080 or Lynne Jackson at 434-1954). If you know who your alderman is, here is a list.
published Dec98/Jan99 Newsletter
