I’m tired of hearing of residents having to raise tens of thousands of their hard-earned dollars for attorneys and technical consultants to fight the very town boards that are here to represent their interests.

I’m tired of residents living in fear for the safety of their homes and families as they face massive development corporations’ applications that they fear will exacerbate massive flooding and ruin their homes and any reasonable standard of living.

But most of all, I'm tired of seeing the town "put the horse before the cart" and consider massive and potentially devastating development proposals without an updated master plan in place that lays out what areas of town can and should be open for development; and what areas should not be developed because of exactly these types of problems.

Not having basic planning in place for town development before we continue more development just doesn’t make sense. Our Harrison families are paying for it with flooding and infrastructure issues that threaten to ruin everything they moved to their neighborhoods for.

Morela Paris has lived in Purchase for four years, Michael Pearson for six. Both—like their neighbors—chose to move to the area for the quiet, the safety and the surrounding green spaces.

“The beauty of the environment is what made us fall in love with Harrison and choose to move here from the city rather than to Scarsdale or Bronxville,” said Paris. “We fell in love with it and were so excited to make our home here.”

That choice has turned into a nightmare. Just three months after the Paris family purchased their home an application came before the Harrison Planning Board from the Falcon Development Group, part of a continuing spate of applications by this group to build homes on a steeply sloped ridge in Silver Lake at Sherman Avenue and Livingston.

Falcon Group has submitted three proposed plan alternatives for the site, one involving multiple houses with emergency vehicle access through residential neighborhoods in Purchase, another for cluster homes—despite local disapproval of high-density housing—and the third for estates.

The problem, according to the residents, is that all three proposals involve blasting and bridging the Mamaroneck River. These are the same neighborhoods that have been suffering high-level flood issues that have been devastated in many recent storms.

Technical experts have told these residents that this development will drastically exacerbate their current flooding issues and, even worse, that the flooding problems they deal with now could get worse if the development proceeds. Have we learned nothing from Project Home Run?

Anne Gold, the spokeswoman for the Purchase Environmental Protection Association, (PEPA), which has been fighting this development shoulder-to-shoulder with residents since 2005, said her heart goes out to these residents.

“When they showed me photos of what they go through now every time there are heavy rains, I couldn’t believe the damage,” Gold said. “Now the town is seriously considering approving a project that will only make their problems ten times worse. I can’t believe they are even considering building in this terrain.”

The town board has been made aware of the issues these neighborhoods already face.

“We have begged the town to help us by dredging the river many times," Paris said. "The town did spend half a million dollars on dredging machinery but never trained anyone to use it and the machine sank.”

Paris said she couldn’t believe the town would even consider a proposal that could make flooding in the area worse.

“This is an extremely serious problem that the town has not been able to handle and now they are considering a proposal that will only make it worse—it’s not right,” she said.

Residents in Silver Lake, Purchase and Mamaroneck contend that building on the proposed site would not only create devastating effects on existing flood levels, but would also affect wetlands on and around the site, storm mitigation and existing infrastructure problems like emergency access and overcrowding of schools.

“Our elementary schools are already packed into portable classrooms and trailers," Pearson said. "For the taxes we are paying this is just not right."

Six years after the initial resident groups began their battle they continue to fight. About 100 residents appeared at the last planning board meeting and they have raised an additional $10,000 in the last two weeks to add to the tens of thousands already spent during the last four rounds of battling this developer.

The town planning process is not helping. The Final Environmental Impact Statement from the Falcon Group was approved without allowing the resident group to see it—which is legal—but has irked some homeowners in the area.

“We are struggling to respond to plans that we’ve never ever seen," Paris said. "The way the process has been handled to date at the planning board has been disappointing.”

PEPA maintains that this should be of great concern to the town as a whole.

“I’m very worried about not only these neighborhoods, but also the rest of the town where much of the undeveloped land is steep slope," Gold said. "This is not simply a Silver Lake, West Harrison, Brae Burn, Purchase and Mamaroneck issue, it is a town issue."

There will be a special hearing to deal with the next round of questions and concerns raised by Falcon Group’s applications on Nov. 29. Residents and PEPA will be raising technical issues that have not been raised to date and responding to the applicant's previous responses.

“There are many important issues that need to be reviewed and we are seeking that the planning board will keep the hearing open after this meeting so the issues can be reviewed by them," Gold said. "Let’s hope sanity prevails and we make it clear that these developers are trying to build on un-buildable land.”

In the meantime, the residents fight on.

“It's a daily battle,” Paris said.

One has to wonder, at what point does it no longer become cost-effective for the developer to continue looking at the site, because these residents are not going to go away.

“We have spent tens and tens of thousands of dollars and another ten thousand dollars was raised again in the last two weeks,” Pearson said. “We will never give up, this is about our families and our homes and we're not planning on going anywhere.”