Eastchester REVIEW THE
February 17, 2017 | Vol. 5, Number 7| www.eastchesterreview.com
Marriott hotel opposition files for court injunction By COREY STOCKTON Staff Writer
Eastchester FD: County mutual aid system is broken By COREY STOCKTON Staff Writer The Eastchester Fire District says it should have been called to assist in a fatal fire outside of its borders—less than a mile away from one of its stations— in nearby Scarsdale late last year. The deadly fire killed the homeowner, Dr. John Salimbene, who ran his medical practice from a home office. Salimbene had also been the official physician for the village of Tuckahoe for more than 50 years. The cause of the fire has not been determined to date, according to Scarsdale fire Chief James Seymour. The fire, which occurred at
around 3:20 p.m. on Dec. 4, 2016 at 174 Boulevard in Scarsdale, was severe enough to warrant the call for mutual aid to other fire departments in Westchester County. In addition to the Scarsdale Fire Department, several other departments were called by 60 Control, a county service which is responsible for dispatching mutual aid when it receives a call from a department in need of assistance. According to Westchester County Department of Emergency Services documents, fire departments are not supposed to directly request mutual aid from a neighboring department, and should instead go through 60 Control. In response to a Freedom of Information Law, FOIL, request
made by the Review this month, the emergency services department is compiling a list of other departments that were called to assist in that fire, according to Kieran O’Leary, an emergency services spokesman. The Eastchester Fire District, however, maintains that it was not one of the departments called to assist. However, Richard Dempsey, the captain on duty at the time of the fire, responded on his own volition, sending two of the department’s trucks to the scene, according to Eastchester fire officials. Dennis Winter, chairman of the Eastchester Fire District Board of Fire Commissioners, said the Fire Department was alerted to smoke in the area by
Eastchester police officer who had received calls of smoke in the area. But fire district officials said they shouldn’t have had to rely on self-dispatch to respond to the fire, as its northernmost station, at 31 Wilmont Road in Eastchester, is less than seven-tenths of a mile away from where the fire took place. Eastchester fire officials noted, and Seymour confirmed, that Scarsdale’s southernmost station, which was closest to the location of the fire, was closed on Dec. 4, as the station’s only engine was in the repair shop. Winter said that while the mutual aid system has usually AID continued on page 5
One day after Tuckahoe’s building inspector issued a permit to begin excavating a socalled hotspot of contaminated soil on the site scoped to become a Marriott hotel, opponents have filed an injunction hoping a judge will issue a stop work order on the project. On Feb. 8, a day after village Building Inspector Bill Williams issued a permit to begin removing potentially contaminated soil from a 30-square-foot area called Source Area 2, attorneys met before Westchester County Justice Larry Schwartz to argue whether or not digging on Marbledale Road should be forestalled while the court weighs the merits of a lawsuit initially filed against the project in November. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, a group of nine Tuckahoe residents who live in close proximity to the site, are hoping to overturn an approval of a remediation plan of the site by several agencies. The listed parties include the village Planning Board, the building inspector, the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation, DEC, and the New York state Department of Health, DOH. If the plaintiffs are victorious in court, the development project could be required to go back through another environmental review process, which could take years to complete. In October, the Planning Board approved the site plan for the hotel, which included plans to remove contaminants from the site through the DEC’s Brownfield Cleanup Program.
The program grants tax breaks to developers for cleaning up and then redeveloping contaminated sites. Bilwin Development Affiliates was accepted into the program in 2014 with plans to build a 5-story, 6,400-square-foot hotel and restaurant on the Marbledale Road property, which had formerly been a marble quarry and subsequently was used as an industrial and municipal waste dump. A separate opposition group of residents called the Marbledale Road Environmental Coalition, as well as other critics of the project, have rallied against the DEC-approved cleanup. While opponents have long argued that the site was not properly investigated for chemicals or objects potentially below the surface, a panel of defense attorneys claimed that work on the site has met state standards. “It has been investigated to the point that we know how to control what’s down there,” said Lynda Shaw, an attorney for Bilwin. A lawyer from the state attorney general’s office, representing the DEC and the DOH, said the level of public concern over this site was highly unusual, as the remediation plan was not out of ordinary procedure. But David Gordon, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, said the state’s standard procedures had been scrutinized by an independent set of environmental experts hired by the plaintiffs, who believe that the air monitoring program on the site, which is designed to detect dangerous levels of toxins, is not protective enough. INJUNCTION continued on page 8
INSIDE Bronxville receives historic donation Story on page 9.