TOWN OF ULSTER >> A group that opposes the planned Niagara Bottling plant says a decision on whether to the project will get state tax breaks should be delayed until after the environmental review of the plan is complete, but local leaders involved in the process disagree.
Kingston.Citzens.org would prefer the company be denied the Start-Up NY incentives altogether, but the group’s leader, Rebecca Martin, said the decision should at least be put off.
“New York state law specifically prohibits state agencies from funding an action until it has complied with the provisions of a State Environmental Quality Review [Act],” the group’s written request reads. “Before considering the Niagara Bottling proposal for a tax abatement, we urge the Empire State Development Corporation to allow the full environmental review process to occur so that all its related impacts can be evaluated, including the construction and operation of the plant, the sale of the water, the implications for Kingston’s overall water supply, the infrastructure required for withdrawals and the potential impacts to the water bodies from which Kingston draws its water supplies.”
Niagara Bottling wants to build a 415,000-square-foot plan on the southwest corner of the TechCity property in the town of Ulster and draw up to 1.75 million gallons of water per day from the city of Kingston’s Cooper Lake reservoir in the town of Woodstock. KingstonCitizens.org says the city can’t spare that much water and that a public commodity should not be sold to a private company that plans to profit from it.
The business logic of KingstonCitizens.org’s request is being questioned by Ulster County Community College President Donald Katt, who has recommended Niagara be granted the Start-Up NY benefits, and town of Ulster Supervisor James Quigley, who supports the bottling plant proposal.
Quigley said opposition groups know that “no reasonable business person is going to invest thousands of dollars into a process if the inducements that were available might be denied upon completion of the SEQRA process.”
Quigley, an accountant, said projects often are awarded funding and incentives before the environmental review process is started; then, if they don’t pass muster, they don’t get the money.
“Do you enroll in high school and automatically get a degree?” he said. “No. There is a process you have to get through.”
Quigley said this latest request by KingstonCitizens.org strikes him as just another attempt by the group to block the Niagara project.
“I continue to see evidence that the opposition is using the SEQRA process to kill the project and not use the SEQRA process as it was legislatively intended … which was to evaluate the impacts on the community and to determine what action can be taken to mitigate those impacts,” the supervisor said.
Martin said the environmental review process by the town has been flawed so far.
“One could say that the way the SEQRA process has been used up to now was, in fact, not the way the SEQRA process was intended,” she said.
Specifically, Martin said, the process has been “segmented” to include only some potential impacts.
Katt, whose college is one of 60 in the State University of New York system chosen to partner with businesses in the Start-Up NY program, echoed Quigley in saying the incentive program and the environmental review are unrelated.
“These are two processes,” he said. “One has nothing to do with the other.”
The environmental review is in the hands of the town of Ulster. The Empire State Development Corp. will decide whether to include Niagara Bottling in the Start-Up NY program.
A Start-Up NY designation for Niagara Bottling would mean the company’s employees would pay no state income tax for 10 years and the company itself would pay no sales tax on building materials and no state corporate taxes for 10 years.
Last week, the Niagara Bottling plant was not included among nearly 120 Mid-Hudson Valley projects that were granted a total of $83 million in state economic development aid. The company was hoping for as much as $10.8 million in state money to put toward the estimated $57 million cost of building the bottling plant.
In a related matter, Katt said he and other officials have received a petition circulated by UCCC students and signed by about 950 people asking the college to rescind its support of Niagara getting Start-Up NY approval.
Katt said no decision about the request has been made.
