Will plan help or hurt Carmans River area?

It isn't just about saving a river -- it's about saving suburbia.

That's what is at stake, say the political, environmental and development leaders who crafted a plan unveiled earlier this year to protect the Carmans River watershed in Brookhaven.

Its authors trumpet it as the most significant piece of environmental legislation on Long Island since the 1993 Pine Barrens Act.

Critics say its potential impact is undermined by concessions made to developers that would force them farther from the river but allow them to build thousands more homes near main thoroughfares with public transportation.

That very trade-off, supporters say, has the potential to be a blueprint for future growth in central Long Island's "last frontier" of undeveloped land. The goal: change an unsustainable model of suburban sprawl that has produced failed strip malls that isolate businesses from homes and force an over-reliance on cars.

"It is my hope that a plan like this should be a model for the rest of the Island," said Kevin Law, president of the Long Island Association, who was not part of the study group that crafted the plan.

Public hearing Tuesday

Others disagree. The concessions are "like a gift in a wrapper to developers," said MaryAnn Johnston, president of the Affiliated Brookhaven Civic Organization, a network of residents' groups. "We don't want to sacrifice the rest of the town to high-density development."

Residents get their first chance to comment on the landmark document during a hearing Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. at Brookhaven Town Hall in Farmingville.

The plan was ordered by Brookhaven Supervisor Mark Lesko, who pushed it as a tool to steer development away from 9,100 acres of sensitive Carmans River watershed. That would keep the river -- one of the Island's four longest, extending from Middle Island to Bellport Bay -- from succumbing to the kind of pollution that has wracked the nearby Forge River.

The meat of the plan is 25 recommendations that include expanding the nearby Pine Barrens Core Preservation Area, strengthening the state's "Wild And Scenic Recreational River Act" regulations, providing stricter management of invasive plants and acquiring open space in and around the river's watershed.

Density a key issue

The plan's most controversial provision would severely restrict future building near the river by increasing the amount of property needed to construct a single house. Owners who decide not to build would be able to sell so-called development credits to developers, who would use the credits to build elsewhere with greater density than allowed by current zoning.

Such construction would be allowed on about 10,000 acres of commercial and industrial lands away from the river elsewhere in Brookhaven. This would allow the construction of multifamily homes and affordable housing -- as many as 7,500 new homes in all -- as well as small businesses within residential neighborhoods.

The state Pine Barrens Act of 1993, which prohibited development on 53,000 acres of central Suffolk, also utilized a development credit plan to move growth away from an environmentally sensitive area.

"There's no doubt that we need this density in terms of creating mixed-income workforce housing," Michael White, executive director of the Long Island Regional Planning Council, said of the Carmans plan.

Critics say the higher building density will be too much for established neighborhoods. They worry the plan's new regulations will trump property rights and that its environmental protections don't go far enough. And farmers wonder whether changes in zoning would devalue their properties, said Chad Trusnovec, president of the Yaphank Taxpayers & Civic Association.

"The protection of the river obviously is a very big thing," he said. "But at what extent are we going to go to protect it and are we infringing on people's property rights?"

The plan likely will undergo a series of hearings before it can be approved. State regulators have to weigh in. Lesko and group members agree the process will be arduous.

But no one questions that the stewardship of the Carmans watershed and mapping growth for central Suffolk are worthy goals, said Larry Levy, executive dean of Hofstra University's National Center for Suburban Studies. "It's a part of Long Island that's going to be the center of its growth for 50 years," he said.