Babylon sets fee schedule for developers seeking Pine Barrens Credits

Babylon will begin charging developers for the work involved with administering credits that allow projects to exceed wastewater limits.

The town has created a fee schedule for developers seeking Pine Barrens Credits, a state program that allows for more dense development in other parts of the county while protecting land out east. Developers purchase a certain amount of credits based on how much they are expecting to exceed the wastewater limit in an area without sewers.

The credits cost about $40,000 each and are used to compensate pine barrens forest landowners in Brookhaven, Riverhead and Southampton towns since they couldn’t develop their own properties, said Rich Groh, the town’s chief environmental analyst. Each credit allows for about 300 gallons of wastewater flow per day, which is about equivalent to a single-family home’s output, he said.

The wastewater limits and amount of credits needed to exceed those limits are determined by the Suffolk County Department of Health. But first the town must give permission for the credits. A committee made up of Groh and representatives from the planning department and attorney’s office reviews the developer’s application.

“First we look to see if there are any alternatives,” Groh said. “Is there a vacant lot next to the property that they could acquire, or could they run a sewer line and connect? We try to see is it absolutely necessary to use the Pine Barrens Credits.”

For the committee’s work, the town will now charge developers $1,000 per credit or a fraction thereof for residential projects; $3,000 per credit or a fraction thereof for industrial, commercial, multifamily and senior citizen multifamily projects on less than 1 acre; and $10,000 per credit or a fraction thereof for such projects more than an acre.

Groh said the town has received two requests in the past year for the credits, one from Linzer Products Corporation in West Babylon, which is looking to expand its existing building and is seeking 4.8 credits. The other is from Dingle Bay Enterprises, which seeks .9 credits for a subdivision in Deer Park.

“We’re not getting a whole lot of these, but we’re keeping track of them,” Groh said.

By Denise M. Bonilla

denise.bonilla@newsday.comdenisebonilla

Denise Bonilla has worked at Newsday since 2003 and covers the Town of Babylon, including the villages of Lindenhurst and Amityville.