Wheatfield Crossing ready to roll

By Benjamin Joe

The Wheatfield Crossing subdivision is set to build its first phase of 38 homes between Shawnee and Townline roads, with the approval of the Town of Wheatfield Town Board.

The board voted to give developers the rubber stamp with some basic conditions after approximately a year of planning, starting in August of 2024. Some of those conditions include submitting plans for grading certain lots to provide sufficient drainage for those properties.

“As the subdivision goes in, some of (these conditions) state the obvious,” said Tim Zuber, town engineer. “There’s some lots there on one of the few places we have a hill. They need to provide an actual drainage plan as a condition for their building permit, just so we can see how they’re going to drain them.

“And some conditions saying they agree they can’t remove signs we put in there. … The DEC (New York State Department of Environmental Conservation) requires us to put signs for a wet pond as a storm water management practice. Any pond greater than 3 feet deep you have to have a sign saying, ‘No Swimming.’ So, we put those signs in and we want to make sure they don’t get taken away.”

Zuber noted the developer of the subdivision was highly cooperative with the town, even working on getting a lighting district started sooner in the process than any other developer.

“Everyone has to do it; it’s just taken a little longer (usually). We recommended they get it started and they did,” he said.

Wheatfield Supervisor Don MacSwan said he and the board were satisfied with the planning of the subdivision.

“The developer installs everything and we inspect it. Water lines. Sewer lines. The Highway Department inspects it with the Engineering Department and do walk-throughs. Once everything gets done and it’s in place, we approve it, and that’s how it came to us tonight,” he said.

“I thought they did a really good job,” he added. “We had a few glitches. There was some stone in the sewer lines, just from the construction. Our guys went out and looked at it; they got all the stone out of the lines. It’s very typical, nothing earthshaking … but they cleaned it up.”

In other news

Mark Clark, head for Wheatfield’s Water and Sewer Department, said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency inspections for lead and copper services in residents’ water lines are being completed, with 1,690 out of 2,882 done.

Clark said letters will be going out in November to complete the rest.

Approximately 150 more letters will be sent to houses built between 1983-86 to test for lead due to lead soldering being used in those years on copper pipes.

Clark said 60 samples need to be acquired by Dec. 1.