Here's The Latest on Clovewood & What You Can Do About It
This isn't just a Southern Orange County issue anymore. If you get your drinking water from the Ramapo River, this issue will immediately impact you too.
Above: The Ramapo River starts in Monroe and travels all the way through Southern Orange County, Rockland County, and New Jersey. Every resident who depends on the Ramapo River (over 2 million) will be impacted by the Clovewood project in South Blooming Grove.
Howdy.
A lot is going on concerning Clovewood and its impact on Southern Orange County, Rockland County, and New Jersey residents, who depend on the Ramapo River for water and recreation.
So, I will skip the usual preamble and get right into the situation …
Calling all Conservation Advisory Committees and Climate Smart Task Forces:
There are over a thousand pages of dense documentation to be read concerning both Clovewood (here) and Orange County Sewer District 1 (here).
While I am indeed going through these pages, I’m not Superman.
Here’s my suggestion: Blooming Grove has a Conservation Advisory Committee. Chester has one too. Woodbury has a Climate Smart Task Force. Monroe has …
Something.
It’s often hard to tell what Monroe has because Herr Cardone either bullies them — just look at all the Town Board meetings involving the Tree Code revisions — or they’re just not loud enough at meetings.
Anyway, the point is: You’ve got these groups. Not just here, but in Rockland and in New Jersey too. All of these groups need to get together immediately.
What (I think) all these groups should do is get together, set up one of those quick websites on like Wix or something, and just establish a joint, region-wide clearinghouse of information concerning the Clovewood and OCSD1 DEIS documents, and the impact this project will have on the Hudson River, Satterly Creek, and the Ramapo River.
Write them all down in simple, plain language and point out every single error, inconsistency, bad assumption, and corruption point. Because there is A LOT.
For example, Tom Shepstone — Yes, the one who called your brown drinking water a “dog and pony show”— was the Clovewood planner before Joel Stern, a Clovewood Employee, hired him as Village Planner. Then, Mr. Shepstone became part of the lead agency approving his own plans.
That’s something the public should be aware of.
But when you have thousands of pages of documents, and very little time to get the first Article 78 through the door to pause any activity on the Clovewood property, this needs to be a team effort. This is especially important because South Blooming Grove residents may have (and do) all the context behind Clovewood that they can explain to the other communities.
Notably, The bad actors involved (Joel Stern, Isaac Ekstein, Tom Shepstone, Al Fusco and Fusco Engineering, Scott Ugell, George Kalaj, Avraham Bur Jacobowitz and Bernard Jacobowitz, Jacob Gold, Ziggy Brach.)
Although if you were to FOIL — and someone sure as shit should — all of the encounters between Ziggy Brach and the Town of Monroe and Ziggy Brach and the Town of Woodbury, you’d have more than enough information on him alone to publicly and factually verify that he’s a bad actor.
(And often one that threatens baseless lawsuits citing antisemitism whenever he doesn’t get what he wants. Since nobody is talking about religion here, Mr. Brach, and that argument, can get fucked. We’re talking about sewage and water only.)
My suggestion is that these local climate task forces and committees get together and form that team.
Avengers Assemble.
(I finally found an in-context and completely topical way to say that.)
Just be careful of a couple of people out there, will you? Woodbury Village Trustee Matthew Fabbro is now making a lot of noise about how he’s against Clovewood. Well, buddy, if you’re so adamant against Clovewood, out of everyone, you’ve got a direct line to Senator James G. Skoufis.
We know that because we’ve successfully FOIL’ed your texts with him.
So instead of sitting at the dais at Woodbury Village meetings and making faces or shaking your head when being fact-checked, how about you and your other “concerned about development” pack of stupids (Tyler Etzel Jr., John U. Keleman, and James Freiband) communicate with our State Senator about his complete and total failure to do much of anything for the residents of Southern Orange County on this issue.
Where are Mr. Etzel and Mr. Keleman, who are out there right now campaigning on opposing high-density development, on Clovewood?
Fucking nowhere, buddy.
Lead. Follow. Or get out of the way.
P.P.S. I know The Photo-News just published another letter from alleged environmental expert Jay Westerveld, but as I’ve already written about here (see Story #2), that man should not be included in any of these conversations either.
Everyone else? The door is wide open.
Class Action Lawsuit
Southern Orange County residents have a number of legal remedies at their disposal.
The first is that you should all be submitting FOIL requests to both South Blooming Grove AND Orange County about Clovewood, South Blooming Grove from the time Joel Stern first took over (March of 2020)
Orange County will likely give you what you ask for, but take their sweet ass time. (Here’s a recent example of that.)
South Blooming Grove won’t give you what you want, but that’s ok because it opens them up to Article 78. The kind they’re about to be hit with on November 1st.
The second is to file an Article of 78 (writ of mandamus) against the New York State DEC for failing to review both the Clovewood documents and the OCSD1 documents adequately. This is the thing that needs to be filed right away. It will lose. But that’s ok. It buys you time.
Had the DEC properly done so, just on the sewage and water stuff alone, there would have been no logical or factual basis to approve this project. That’s because, while Clovewood claims to include its own sewage treatment plant …
-The data in the DEIS for Clovewood is a decade old (tests done in 2014, with some from 2017)
-The assumptions based on those calculations are faulty at best and intentionally false at worst given Mr. Shepstone’s pattern of false statements while selling projects he’s involved with. Plus, Mr. Joel Stern lies compulsively.
-OCSD1 is out of capacity, and Clovewood needs the OCSD1 capacity while it builds its nebulous Sewage plant.
-When the Clovewood Sewage plant opens, it will dump its sewage into the Hudson River’s local estuary, the Moodna Creek, which the Satterly feeds into.
And I don’t know how many of you know a thing or two about Climate change, but you’ll understand drought is a real concern. Like, as I write this, and when we have drought — more frequent under climate change — the creek runs dry.
So, Clovewood is literally going to dump its shit onto Cornwall residents who use the Creek for water and recreation, and because of the low (or nonexistent) levels of the Creek, that shit ain’t going anywhere.
That brings us to the Class Action. There’s something that needs to happen before you can do the Class Action: Supervisor Robert Jeroloman has to organize a community forum. At that forum, South Blooming Grove residents need to convey to him their desire to dissolve the Village of South Blooming Grove.
Upon that dissolution, the Town of Blooming Grove needs a clear, actionable plan to incorporate South Blooming Grove and must be ready to act as soon as possible.
Without the Town of Blooming Grove, you can file a class action lawsuit against South Blooming Grove because you want to dissolve it, but that would then make the area susceptible to annexation from the City of Kiryas Joel. So, I don’t recommend anyone sue South Blooming Grove without the Town’s cooperation.
So, that’s the hold up with the class action lawsuit.
I have talked to the Supervisor about this possibility, but I do not feel comfortable leading this discussion. It has to be you, the people of South Blooming Grove, making this request since joining the Town of Blooming Grove will impact your cost of living and how things operate in terms of your local government.
P.S. Yes. I know there’s another lawsuit against SBG in federal court, but that one has no impact on the Clovewood situation besides what’s put out there in discovery. That’s assuming Mr. Maderia has a competent lawyer, and Mr. Maderia has a competent plan, and they both know what questions to ask. I think most of you can figure out my opinion on this one.
The Coalition of the Willing
So far, you’ve got The Woodbury Village Trustees (led by Susan Fries-Ciriello and Victor Ferrarelli) and you’ve got both Cornwall local governments.
The Town of Monroe had a fucking meltdown after Councilwoman Maureen Richardson read the Clovewood letter into the public record. We’ll do that story this weekend too.
Why did they freak out?
That’s because Monroe Town Supervisor Tony Cardone, much like Woodbury Town Supervisor Kathryn Luciani, works for the developers.
When she was running for Assembly, Mrs. Luciani took money from Ziggy Brach (Clovewood’s majority shareholder).
Mr. Cardone and Mrs. Luciani are currently working with the representative for the Monroe Common Developer, Lipa Deutsch, to put a road through the (Woodbury) Town owned land forever green space.
That should tell you how much Herr Cardone and his flunkie, Supervisor Luciani, care about the environment and the health and safety of their residents.
(Mrs. Luciani denies that she is assisting Mr. Deutsch, but Mrs. Luciani, like Joel Stern, compulsively lies to her residents too. Like that time she said she had no one applying to work at the Animal Shelter, which really was just an excuse to hire her son.)
So, you can’t count on the Town of Monroe and Town of Woodbury beyond Councilwoman Maureen Richardson.
The Village of Monroe and the Village of Washingtonville are currently looking into the situation. That’s ok, for now.
But it won’t be ok a month from now. If you live in the Village of Monroe and the Village of Washingtonville, I encourage you to let them do their thing and discuss, but don’t let the fence-sitting go on too long.
(The Town of Blooming Grove and the Town of Chester haven’t commented yet, but in their defense, they were just made aware of all this yesterday.)
As far as the Rockland and Ramapo adjacent communities like Tuxedo go — as well as the impacted New Jersey communities — I can let you know this week, since many of them are just now learning about this danger to their community’s drinking water.
It’s going to be up to all of you to make sure your local governments do the right thing and join this coalition.
The goal of this coalition should be to send a letter asking the DEC Commissioner, Sean Mahar, to revoke ALL of the Clovewood permits, utilizing the evidence created by the Regional Task Forces and Climate Advisory Groups. The letter should, I feel, also include verifiable and documented instances of non-compliance with local planning boards exhibited by Mr. Ziggy Brach, given that he is the majority shareholder in Clovewood.
Both Monroe and Woodbury should have plenty to contribute on that front.
The DEC has wide legal latitude to revoke permits if they deem the permittee (Keen Equities, Ziggy Brach) and those associated with the permittee working on their behalf (Joel Stern, as both an employee of Keen Equities and de facto Mayor of South Blooming Grove, and Tom Shepstone, the Village Planner and Clovewood Planner), “Bad actors.”
For both New Jersey and New York residents, there should also be a second letter insisting that the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection examine all of the related documents and decisions from NYS’s DEC concerning Clovewood and Orange County Sewer District 1. In the case of Orange County Sewer District 1, the New Jersey DEP has to involve itself with this process and not sit around on the sidelines like it’s currently doing.
Now, let’s be clear. As far as that DEC letter goes? There’s a 99.9% chance the DEC ignores this letter.
That’s ok if they do.
Why?
I can’t give away the entire legal strategy here.
You can trust me, or you can talk to a friendly local attorney who can probably figure out the answer to that question. There are plenty of people out there smarter than I am, and they hold law degrees.
So if I see an opportunity, they probably see it too.
What About New Jersey and Rockland?
In Rockland County and New Jersey, two million people depend on the Ramapo River for their drinking water.
But.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has routinely ignored requests for comments concerning the situation at Orange County Sewer District 1. The most I’ve gotten out of their press office is that NJ DEP has “yet to take a position” on this issue.
Well, what’s the hold up?
Because … If you get your drinking water from the Ramapo, you should know that Orange County Sewer District 1 is …
-Being investigated by the Federal EPA, the New York State Department of Health, and the New York State DEC (as useless as they seem to be.)
-The plant is overcapacity, the sewer lines leading to the plant are failing (producing a dangerous hydrogen sulfide smell in places like Monroe)
-Being overcapacity means there are backups and discharges of sewage into the Ramapo, fucking up your drinking water.
-And I don’t know if you’re paying attention, but Climate Change means less and less fresh, clean drinking water. This includes the Satterly Creek, the Hudson River, and the Ramapo River.
So, you tell me …
Given that you and your children and your children’s children are going to have access to less and less clean drinking water — a Human Right, by the way — aren’t you a little concerned about a corrupt County government and a greedy local developer fucking up the drinking water you do have?
You should be!
Because what you have here is a classic case of a wealthy real estate developer buying their way to getting what they want, regardless of the environmental impacts.
The difference between then and now is Climate Change: Fresh water is increasingly going to be limited.
We all need to manage what is left carefully.
What Else Can You Do?
The first thing that needs to happen, fairly quickly, is that Article 78 demand to overturn the DEC decision, which the courts will absolutely ignore. Doesn’t matter. It creates time and opportunity.
The second thing is to get everyone together and get accurate, unbiased information on Clovewood and OCSD1 into the hands of impacted communities and their government officials.
The third, and final thing is to sue, sue, sue.
I’m not saying you can stop this thing. But you can sure as shit slow it down and make sure Mr. Stern, Mr. Shepstone, Mr. Skoufis, and Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus know you’re coming for them next.