Ruling on use of ex-KOSCO site still a month away

PORT EWEN, N.Y. >> The Esopus Zoning Board of Appeals expects it will be another month before members vote on a request to use the former KOSCO oilstorage property for equipment storage for a company that cleans up environmental spills.

Board members said at their most recent meeting that the decision needs to be based on how long the site has been inactive.

Applicant Jess Hicks has said his company is a satellite operation of Wappingers Falls-based Island Pump and Tank. He says there would be considerably less use of the property at 15 Broadway in Port Ewen than when it was a fuel-distribution site.

The 5.6-acre property has not been used for business purposes since 2013, and the oil-storage tanks were removed about three years ago.

Zoning board members said their decision should be based on whether the property’s use was discontinued more than five years ago and whether the presence of the tanks represented usage.

“My thought at this point [is] I don’t think it was discontinued more than five years ago,” member Karl Wick said.

Hicks’ attorney, Urs Furrer, said the parcel had been used for fuel distribution since the 1940s and has several deed restrictions that limit allowable uses.

Comments at a public hearing last month included a request from some Esopus residents to have any future use of the property conform with the town’s Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan.

Hicks said last month that many of his employees are dispatched from their homes, “so it’s not like there [will be] an influx of trucks coming in there in the morning and then everybody leaving.”