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Hinchey preaches to the choir, slams Awosting Reserve plan
By Jeremiah Horrigan
The Times Herald-Record, February 07, 2003

Hamlet of Wallkill - The men who want to develop a "conservation
community" along the Shawangunk Ridge had just concluded a thoroughly professional, well-rehearsed and technically expert presentation before at least 500 people in the Wallkill High School auditorium last night. Recognizing a hostile crowd when they addressed one, the developers asked for civility. They asked for sympathy, for understanding. Their proposed Awosting Reserve development would be a good thing, they said, not just for
the 349 buyers of expensive private homes they wish to build along the Shawangunk Ridge, but for everybody.

These members of Chaffin/Light Associates received polite applause laced with hisses for their efforts. And then they got worse. They got Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Saugerties, who addressed the crowd with the confidence of an old-school preacher, come to tell his flock how it really was.

The crowd, recognizing one of its own, was on its feet and cheering
within seconds. The property Chaffin/Light wants to develop was, Hinchey said, "One of the last great places" on Earth. And Awosting Reserve was little more than "an example of suburban sprawl, just a very large suburban housing development."

Hoots and howls and waves of applause rang throughout the auditorium. The Chaffin/Light team had called their project a "conservation community" that would feature "welcome houses" just inside the private development.

These, he said, were nothing more than examples of "disingenuous phrases" that had been "sprinkled lavishly throughout the proposal." Where Chaffin/Light spoke of retaining or creating "corridors" throughout the property where wildlife could roam, Hinchey saw the "fragmentation" of the eco-system.

When he declared Awosting Reserve's plans a "significant threat" to the region's economy and ecology and left the podium, town officials urged the crowd to keep an open, unemotional mind about the project. It was an impossible request.