A Different Path for Winston Farm
SAUGERTIES - Andrew Faust has a bone to pick with the developers of Winston Farm. A couple of bones, in fact, concerning the project’s impact on local water systems and the credibility of the developers’ projected economic costs and benefits.
Faust is founder and director of Ellenville-based Permaculture Living Lands Trust, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Permaculture, per Wikipedia, “is an approach to land management and settlement design that adopts arrangements observed in flourishing natural ecosystems. It includes a set of design principles derived using whole-systems thinking.”
Having studied, taught, and implemented the practice for 30 years at sites throughout the Hudson Valley and in New York City, including the design of the Ashokan Center’s master plan, Faust has the credentials and experience to be taken seriously on development issues.
Speaking before the Saugerties Town Board last week, in a presentation arranged by the citizen activists of Beautiful Saugerties, who oppose Winston Farm’s development as proposed by the property’s owners, Faust was in good-cop mode, for the most part.
Rather than trash the existing Winston Farm proposal, he described a more innovative, less mercantile approach geared to “how this property can become a base for the community, a real hub for a movement that needs to happen in a region to become more food-independent and to really honor our water legacy."
The specifics of the practice, as Faust described them, concern water, forests, and food security — regarding which he pointed out the needs of Ulster County’s food pantries.
“Watersheds end up defining what makes good land-use practice in terms of water quality,” he said. “So that’s why I focus for you all on how does Winston Farm play a critical role in water quality, water security, and the future potential of our community to continue to have that ... and how to increase food independence.”
“The fact is that the best way to ensure water quality in the reservoir is to have forests all around it,” he said and noted that the farm’s Beaver Kill “does not have forest all around it. What the Beaver Kill is, is an impaired, impacted stream that is no place to be releasing effluent from a sewage stream.”
At its most expansive, Faust’s vision includes “increased stream buffers, perennial food forests, outdoor recreation and healthy eating opportunities for the community ... wild meadows and pollinator habitat growing healthy food, green job skills, market-scale food production, fruit production including native pollinators and tree crop nurseries."
In summary, he told the town board, “think about a native hardwood forest preserve where partners and friends develop and implement a strategy to increase the health of the forest, a permaculture farm where we train people in ecologically restorative and climate resilient methods of agriculture."
In a phone call with Kingston Wire, Faust was more openly critical of the farm’s current, proposed development plan. He referred to the developers’ fiscal projections as “pie in the sky.”
“I know lots of communities like to swallow the BS pill that developers roll out in front of them, but to substantiate it is a whole other thing. They have to go through a huge amount of hoops to get variances put into place to do the shenanigans that they’re proposing. And in addition, if you look at the price of tax impact on local municipalities, of developments like this, you’ll actually see that the municipality will lose money. ... Just scratch at the surface for a quick minute, and you’ll find that all over the country the data shows that developments cause municipalities to lose money, and they hemorrhage assets, and they lose tax base. If they’re making $1 per resident on tax, they’re paying $1.25 in infrastructure upkeep.”
(In a follow-up email, Faust cited several university and foundation studies that show negative fiscal impact from the current Winston Farm’s development approach.)
Faust also thinks a permaculture-style Winston Farm would match up to the developers’ job creation numbers, especially through a “green jobs training center.”
“What we’re proposing is the continuous creation of new jobs and new skill sets that are lacking right now in the marketplace. And we would like to see Saugerties become a real hub of innovation for what the new entrepreneurial business sector is needing, which is green jobs and green design ... an educational center that also teaches solar thermal hot water biodigesters, builds composting facilities. Training people in those brings in the top business operators from throughout the Northeast, because that’s who I’ve been working with for the last 15 years, teaching this new model of infrastructure and economic development.”
Faust’s vision too is pie-in-the-sky pending two things: someone with the money to underwrite it and enough money to induce the farm’s owners to sell. He maintains that “a number of local land trust groups that are very active in the area that lots of people are familiar with are all in a conversation about how to basically maneuver and protect the property."
Who those groups are Faust declined to say. In what passes for common knowledge (although unconfirmed), a $10 million purchase price has been floated by a large conservation group. The farm’s developers purchased the property four years ago for $4 million.
Faust agreed that, under a deal with OSI or similar groups, the developers would forego substantial potential profits. “The key word there,” he said, “is ‘potential.’”
More info on permaculture can be found in Faust’s book, Earth is Our Home.
