Vote on Carmans River area plan postponed

A plan designed to protect the Carmans River and growth in central Suffolk County has been tabled to make the proposal more palatable for neighboring property owners, Brookhaven officials said.

Town officials had hoped the town board would vote to accept the Carmans River Watershed Protection And Management Plan at a board meeting on Tuesday.

But concerns about the rights of property owners in the Carmans River watershed have prompted the town to indefinitely postpone the vote, town officials said. Town officials need the vote to take place so they can set a public hearing and, later, adopt the plan.

Brookhaven will also ask the state for a two-month extension of the town's deadline for adopting the proposal, Supervisor Mark Lesko said. That would push the deadline to late August. "Let's get this done right," he said.

The Carmans plan is designed to steer development away from 9,100 acres of watershed. Supporters say the proposal would protect what is one of Long Island's four longest rivers -- running 10 miles from Middle Island to Bellport Bay -- from pollution.

Plan supporters say it would allow property owners to sell so-called development credits to developers, who could use the credits to build multifamily housing away from the river with greater density than zoning laws allow.

But the current plan does not identify enough areas for the multifamily projects to be built, town officials said.

And some of the identified areas are not logical places to build multiunit housing, such as the site of a shuttered Borders bookstore in Lake Grove, Lesko said.

The town is working to identify more receiving areas, as well as broaden the credit redemption system to possibly include commercial properties, Lesko said. The town is also working to identify properties in the watershed that can be protected from overdevelopment and find money for open space acquisitions near the river, he said.

Councilman Daniel Panico said the town was right to delay voting on the plan because it probably would not pass as constituted. "We would all be laughed out of the room," he said.