WHITE LAKE, NY — At the Bethel town board meeting on March 25, the board held off on approving an application for a waiver of some sections of town code regarding an on-site wastewater treatment system for four houses that are proposed to be built in the Plum Beach section of a peninsula that juts into White Lake.

The board declined to award the waiver at this point because the application was lacking in a number of significant details that are required to be included. The code says, for instance, “The application shall identify all neighboring parcels that may be impacted by the use of an alternative [septic] system as well as any applicable mitigation measures,” and that was not done.

In a previous proceeding regarding this development, numerous neighbors came out to a planning board public hearing in February to complain about the project and its impact on the adjacent neighborhoods of Beechwood and Homestead.

Three years ago, the residents of Beechwood waged a protracted legal battle against the developer Shaya Boymelgreen, and the developer lost in both Supreme Court and Appellate Court. The issue at the time was that Boymelgreen wanted to pierce a buffer zone that was set up early in the 20th century between the neighborhoods of Beechwood and Plum Beach, and the courts said he could not do that.

This time around, Boymelgreen says he is purchasing a property on Naylor Road, which he will use to access one of the homes he plans to build rather than going through a Beechwood property.

The attorney who represented Beechwood in court three years ago, however, said his recollection of the proceedings is that no subdivision plans exist anymore because of the court ruling, and any development must begin again “from square one.”

Attorney James Bacon told the planning board at a February meeting, “I assure you Beechwood would not have withdrawn, would not have walked out of Judge Meddaugh’s conference knowing that there was some element of this project that somehow survived the lawsuit. I wanted to make that clear. Again, the neighbors need time to look at this project; we would like to hire our own engineer to inspect the septic plans… and safety issues, and I think the board really owes it to us. It is a big project; it is going to affect that area for years to come, and I don’t think they need to rush into anything.”

The planning board has said in the past that it is limited in its authority to deal with the kind of issue that should properly be dealt with in a civil court. In February, planning board chairman Daniel Gettel reiterated that premise. He said, “As a planning board we are a regulatory board. We do not have the power or authority to determine property rights. We cannot determine who has the right to use which road, who has the right to go here, who has the right to go there. We also cannot determine what certain deeds allow certain people in a community to do or have on their property. We are not a court of law.”

It appears that the matter might be headed back to a court of law.