While flushing out the impacts of significant development and tourism on Cooperstown and surrounding areas, Nan Stolzenburg discovered that waste management is at the top of the list.

"The statistics have not yet been fully analyzed," said Stolzenburg at a GEIS meeting held Wednesday morning as she presented preliminary findings.

Problems with waste management will affect not only the village, but the surrounding areas.

Village sewer board chairman Dr. Theodore Peters said that should the population increase significantly, a new, modern sewage plant would become necessary.

"What we're talking about is the ability of the Susquehanna River to receive discharge. There are times in the summer when we've nearly reached the limit of 900,000 gallons a day. We're reluctant at this time to take on any new substantial subscribers. Massive increases would be trouble," said Peters.

The Susquehanna and the sewer plant are one problem. Local soil is another.

Of the 128,284 acres in the study area, a mere 154 have soils amenable to the average septic system, according to Stolzenburg's rough data. Another twenty-eight percent could handle the waste with enlarged leach fields, and an additional seventy-two percent may necessitate expensive and extensive engineering work in order to pass muster.

Stolzenburg emphasized that this may not be entirely unusual for comparable communities, and that she plans to make sure this aspect of the study is further investigated to ensure the accuracy of the figures.

Stolzenburg said that this limitation does not necessarily imply an insurmountable obstacle because "everything can be engineered." But engineering, she said, can be a costly process. It amounts to whether the soil is conducive to development, and this crucial piece of information is still undetermined.

Maps for bedrock, surface geology, well/test boring location, surface water and shallow bedrock have been completed at this time. Maps for floodplains, stream and surface water classification, mineral resources and watershed information are close to completion.

Stolzenburg recently received a report on the results of last month's visual preference survey, at which interested citizens viewed slides and articulated a vision statement aimed at defining "rural character," a term Stolzenburg has repeatedly encountered while speaking to local people.

While she has not yet had an opportunity to analyze the results and create a scoping document, a scan of the results showed that on average, rural images of dirt roads and fields were given a much higher rating of approval than village-oriented scenes. Not surprisingly, she said, the least favorable responses were garnered by shots of sprawl, strip-malls and jammed parking lots surrounding large facilities.

Stolzenburg spoke to the subject of economic development, reiterating, as she has at nearly every meeting, that the GEIS is not an economic study.

Bill Gates, town of Otsego supervisor, said, "I think the public has expectations in this area. If the GEIS is a study of capacity for growth, then part of that is economic growth."

David Bliss, town of Middlefield supervisor, and Dr. Henry Weil felt similarly.

"It seems to me," Weil said, "that there are some specific questions. Determine the trends, and from that you extrapolate potential. There's a passive observational component here. How do other communities with a similar vision address their economic growth? What is a successful economic plan suited to this vision?"

"That might push this into becoming an advocacy document," Gates said.

Stolzenburg's ability to view an area as a complex, layered entity becomes clear when she addresses the effects of one aspect upon another, and her views on economic growth are no different.

"We have to think of this methodically," she said. "We have to see what we've got, where it's likely to be headed, and what the likely negative impacts could be."

Stolzenburg plans to have a scoping document with the results of the visual preference survey done by the next meeting.