The fate of Nile Rodgers’ 2016 “Freak Out! Let’s Dance” music festival at Martha Clara Vineyards will remain undecided for at least a little bit longer.
The environmental assessment form required before the town can move forward in reviewing the application still hasn’t been completed, Riverhead Town building and planning administrator Jeff Murphree said this week. The town is waiting for additional information it requested from the applicant but has not yet received, Murphree said Tuesday.
Rodgers’ special event application will not be acted upon at the board’s Jan. 19 meeting, Murphree said.
The Riverhead Town Board was ready to approve the permit at its Dec. 31 special meeting, until a resident pointed out that it had not completed the required environmental assessment form.
Despite that failure, the board had before it a State Environmental Quality Review Act determination of non-significance and approval of a special event permit for the Aug. 12-14 weekend festival.
Board members were poised to approve the resolution, after hearing the objections and concerns voiced by area residents who attended the meeting that day, until Jamesport-South Jamesport Civic Association president Angela DeVito pointed out that the environmental assessment form — required in order to legally make a determination of significance for any action — had not been completed by the town. The board was forced to table the resolution as a result.
Supervisor Sean Walter, who praised the 2015 concert, which he said he attended, and voiced support for the upcoming festival plans, asked Murphree at the meeting to get the EAF done so the board could act on the permit at its first meeting of the new year. But it remained tabled on Jan. 5.
It won’t be acted on at the upcoming Jan. 19 meeting, either, Murphree said this week, because the town has asked the applicant to provide additional information so it could complete its review and assessment for the EAF, Murphree said.
“I do know they are working on getting additional SEQRA information together, but they have not submitted anything to us,” he said.
Murprhee did not elaborate on what “additional SEQRA information” the town requested from the applicant.
The environmental assessment form has three parts: one to be completed by the applicant and the other two to be completed by the reviewing agency, which makes a determination, based on the information provided by the applicant, whether a proposed action could have significant environmental impacts. A determination that an action will have significant environmental impacts means the applicant is required to provide additional information for additional environmental review by way of an environmental impact statement.
But Riverhead had not completed its portions of the EAF prior to the town board’s Dec. 31 meeting.
“You cannot make a determination of significance without first completing the environmental assessment form,” DeVito told the board Dec. 31. “It is an incomplete application.”
Since then, DeVito has reviewed the application file again, she said. She raised additional concerns in a letter she said she hand-delivered to the Town Board and planning department on the morning of Jan. 5.
The application, in particular the EAF, was prepared by an unqualified representative in the employ of the primary applicant. The SEQRA assessment must be completed by qualified representatives for the applicant.
Traffic impacts from the festival present “an urgent need for a traffic impact study by a qualified individual,” DeVito wrote in the letter.
“Traffic is identified as a negative impact, and yet there is no assessment of such by a qualified individual,” she said. The applicant states that 7,500 people will attend each day of the three-day event, but does not say how many vehicles are expected or what routes they will travel; nor does it assess impacts on local roads, she said.
“The burden on our roadways merits careful consideration BEFORE we give a thumbs’ up to an event of this magnitude,” DeVito wrote, especially during the peak traffic time of a weekend in August.
Traffic on Sound Avenue and Main Road has brought more traffic to Hubbard Avenue and Peconic Bay Boulevard, as tourists guided by GPS technologies have discovered that as an alternative east-west thoroughfare. Traffic on those roads was bumper to bumper on Columbus Day Weekend, according to local residents.
DeVito said spillover traffic impacts must be fully assessed by the applicant as well.
She also raised questions about the calculation of police reimbursement costs, the provision of adequate sanitary facilities and security measures for the festival. A document pertaining to site security during the festival was merely a copy of the one submitted for the 2014 concert, with no changes to reflect the expansion of the event to three days or the anticipated increase in daily attendance.
The special event application is “flawed and deficient,” DeVito wrote and must be resubmitted with information to address the deficiencies prior to the town board voting to approve it.
In a post-script, DeVito also asked that any town board member who received free tickets to the prior Nile Rodgers concerts at Martha Clara recuse himself or herself from voting on the current application.
