The area of northern Otsego County under study in a generic environmental impact statement was described by consultant Nan Stolzenburg as nearing the limits of its environment and infrastructure.

"The area is pretty much at capacity for all these things right now," she told village mayor Wendell Tripp and supervisors David Bliss of Middlefield and Bill Gates of Otsego during a meeting Monday morning.

Stolzenberg said they had been asked to determine the area's capacity for future growth and found there is little room left. "The village has no capacity for growth because of its infrastructure and the lack of available land and Otsego Lake is already at its capacity, she said."

Stolzenberg is in the process of of completeing a draft of the document which already totals 99 pages and is slightly behind schedule.

"It just took longer to pull things together. Now it's a matter of me sitting down and pulling the rest together. I'm almost there," she said.

All the reams of data Stolzenberg has collected have revealed some interestings facts and some findings which they had not anticipated. She spoke about some of them Monday with local officials.

In one instance, the engineer putting together the soils maps discovered that only one percent of the land in Otsego County has soils that are amenable to standard septic systems. The remainder of the soils would indicate the need to look at alternate or modified sewage disposal systems.

"There is a lot of concern on our engineer's part," Stolzenbeg said. "The most significant issue relating to soils is septic systems."

She and her staff looked at the types of systems approved to see what had been done to mitigate a potential problem, but it just didn't match up. The records indicate that standard systems are being approved in soils that are not conducive to them. "A lot of the systems going in are not proper," she said.

Septic systems are the number one source of non-point pollution in the state and Stolzenberg said she believes there needs to be more oversight. Too often, property owners or contractors are doing the percolation tests, instead of a regulatory agency.

According to Stolzenberg, both state and county health departments have recognized the current system may be problematic and have talked about having an agency like the Natural Resources Conservation Service take-over the percolation tests.

Another finding that Stolzenberg said should interest people came out of the traffic studies.

"I think people will be surprised to hear that traffic volume is not the issue that has to be solved," she said.

Not surprisingly, most problems with highways showed up on Route 28 - particularly between Cooperstown and Hartwick Seminary.

"The roads are not over capacity even during the summer," Stolzenberg said.

Capacity is measured by the level of service rating a road receives. Those ratings take into consideration factors such as road design, the number of intersections and travel volume and are expressed as letter grades from A to E, with A being the best. Route 28 is the only stretch of road that received a D rating, she said, adding that it's acceptable, but on the verge of failing.

The issue with Route 28 is not traffic volume, but traffic movement, according to Stolzenberg. There are problems with a number of intersections and a lack of stoplights or poorly timed stoplights. The third, turning lane, the state Department of Transportation has planned for the highway would improve the delays motorists now sometimes encounter. The GEIS will suggest several intersections where signals would help with the movement of traffic.

"The traffic issue is surprising. The impact of the traffic from the baseball camps is not the volume, but movement," she said.

Stolzenberg expects a draft of GEIS to be ready later this year and after a review by Tripp, Bliss and Gates, the document will be released to the public.

The GEIS is expected to provide municipalities and their planning boards with information that will assist them with the decision making process.