County scraps plan for Chester access to lake

Florida beach is enough, county legislators say CHESTER — The county has abandoned a plan to put a public beach on the Chester side of Glenmere Lake. Orange County, which owns the lake, was to secure a $1 million bond to study the best way to develop three open-space areas in the county as public parks. A portion of the bond would have gone to study Glenmere and the possibility of putting in a launch for non-motorized boats, a fishing access, a picnic area, and parking spaces on the Chester shore. Studies will go forward on the other two properties up for consideration, the Gonzaga property in Monroe and the Swartout property in Deerpark. The county legislature’s Physical Services Committee decided on Wednesday to scrap the Glenmere plan because a public access to the lake already exists in Florida, in the Town of Warwick, not far from the proposed site in Chester, according to Steve Neuhaus, a Chester councilman. One side of the lake is in Warwick and the other in Chester. Neuhaus said he discovered the county’s change of plans quite by chance. He was at the committee meeting on business for his employer, Taylor Recycling in Montgomery, when Glenmere came up. He said he wanted to address the committee as a town councilman then and there, but that the committee members refused him. The only representative from Chester they would allow to speak on the matter was county legislator Noel Spencer of District 8, who was not present at the meeting to advocate Chester’s cause, Neuhaus said. Spencer, a former Chester councilman, has for years supported developing a beach in Chester. Neuhaus said he did not know the county would be discussing Glenmere on Wednesday, and does not know if Spencer was aware. Spencer could not immediately be reached for comment before press time. Neuhaus said access on the Chester side had been “a hope and a dream in town for 30, 40 years,” and is disappointed the town was not allowed a say in the county’s plans. The committee members present at Wednesday’s meeting were from other parts of the county, like Wallkill, Port Jervis, Deerpark, and Newburgh, and so are not familiar with Glenmere Lake, he said. Not everyone in Chester approved of the plan. Jay Westerveld, a naturalist from Sugar Loaf, said in a letter to this week’s Warwick Advertiser that the lake “hosts one of the very last populations of New York State-listed endangered northern cricket frogs left in New York State. Any construction of pavilions, docks, etc., would destroy crucial habitat and be in violation of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation regulations.” The northern cricket frog did not seem to factor into the county’s decision, Neuhaus said. Others in town, such as Chester Supervisor William Tully and Chuck Shaughnessy, a 42-year member of the county’s parks commission, supported the idea of a new park at Glenmere. In fact, the development of Glenmere as a recreational area was written into Chester’s master plan.