A Supreme Court judge likely will decide early next year whether the Town of Bethel violated a Satmar Hasidic bungalow colony’s rights and broke its own rules when it denied sewer service to a future residential development on 17B — a case Bethel’s supervisor previously said the town probably couldn’t win.
Kollel Averichim Torah Veyirah sued the town last month after three town board members at a Sept. 14 meeting denied a sewer extension for future homes on Schultz Road, where the group planned to build a small housing development.
That move came after the town first conducted an environmental review and approved the extension in 2010, after finding no detrimental environmental impacts and that the sewer treatment plant had adequate capacity.
Afterwards, opponents gathered signatures but were late in filing a petition and then exerted pressure on the board to rethink the decision.
Residents expressed concerns about traffic and that the environmental review wasn’t adequate.
(Surce: Times Herald Record)
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2 Responses
Unfortunately this is a clear case of bias against the Chasidim in White Lake.
The Town engineer testified that there is more then adequate sewer capacity & as a matter of fact he testified that this sewer expansion would even benefit the operation of the sewer system.
The fact is that The Town engineer, Town Attorney, Town Supervisor, The majority of the Town Council members ALL agreed to permit the Sewer extension.
Now regarding the opponents petition, please note I have a copy of the signed petition showing the name and Addresses of the petition signers, and it’s very puzzling to see that most of the signers live 2 miles or more away from where this proposed expansion site is located.
It’s as if someone living in Flatbush would be opposing a project in Boro Park because of increased traffic…….
The reason they signed the petition is that a few agitators went door to door creating a hysteria that the Chasidim want to take over and destroy Bethel.
A local person told me that he received a message on his answering machine, ”we have to stop the Chasidim from expanding in Bethel”
No question that there is bias involved…add to that underlying anti-semitism and throw in a few self hating Jews and you have the perfect storm. I regularly get the county paper and read all about the local nonsence that goes on. I think that this is in part a backlash from the shul building issue when local codes and laws were ignored. I have no dog in this fight but think that if the Satmar were better neighbors less problems would arise.