The Woodstock Town Board voted unanimously Tuesday to resume environmental testing at 10 Church Road in Shady, seeking to remediate a dispute over thousands of cubic yards of construction and demolition debris dumped near private wells, streams, and the town’s public water supply.
The resolution authorizes the town to hire an independent environmental engineer to review prior testing, determine whether contamination remains, assess any threat to nearby water sources and recommend cleanup measures if needed. It also allows the town to seek administrative inspection warrants if property owners don’t voluntarily allow access for testing.
The vote revives a 2020 monitoring order that town officials say was never completed. That order required independent testing of the fill, water testing at a neighboring property on Reynolds Lane, quarterly monitoring for a year, annual monitoring for up to three years after that, review by the Woodstock Environmental Commission, and preservation of test results by the town’s zoning enforcement officer.
“This is going to tell the story of Church Road, where we were, what happened, and where we would like to go,” Supervisor Anula Courtis said before reading the resolution aloud. She said the issue has persisted for “seven years-plus” and thanked the residents, town officials, and advisory groups who had kept it in public view.
Joseph Karolys, a debris contractor who had already faced state enforcement action over illegal dumping in Saugerties, delivered as much as 3,000 cubic yards of fill to 10 Church Road between December 2019 and July 2020, according to the resolution. It arrived in about 200 truckloads. Karolys is serving a 25-year sentence in state prison for unrelated manslaughter charges.
Woodstock’s building inspector found In May 2020 that the fill was unstable, had been dumped onto a neighboring property and contained construction and demolition debris, which is prohibited under the town’s solid waste law. A state waste composition report later found that about 11% of the sampled material, by weight, consisted of concrete and glass, asphalt, coal, slag, ash, brick and wood.
Karolys and co-property owner Gina Coniglaiaro pleaded guilty in February 2022 to illegal dumping charges under Woodstock’s solid waste law and were each fined $1,500, the maximum penalty then allowed. Similar charges against co-property owner Vincent Conigliaro were dismissed.
The town later issued a building permit for a remediation plan known as “Plan E,” which called for moving, sifting and sorting fill on site. The state Supreme Court in Ulster County vacated the permit in December 2023, finding that Woodstock had issued it in violation of town code.
The new resolution says Plan E didn’t satisfy the town’s obligations under the 2020 monitoring order. It also cites later testing that documented elevated levels of lead and benzo(k)fluoranthene, which the resolution identifies as a probable human carcinogen, as well as a 2024 report that found construction and demolition debris still remained in the fill.
Marcel Nagele, a Woodstock Town Board candidate who has researched the site and pressed officials to keep 10 Church Road on the town’s docket, praised the vote after the resolution passed.
“Last fall, I was able to get the Woodstock Environmental Commission to reopen the door to 10 Church Road, and they deserve a lot of credit for doing that,” Nagele said. “The Woodstock Environmental Commission and this entire Town Board deserves a lot of credit. They’re brave people.”
While the resolution doesn’t order an immediate cleanup, it restarts a process the town approved in 2020 that includes independent testing, a public accounting of what remains at the site and recommendations for what should happen next.