The Babylon Town Board held a public hearing Monday on a request to rezone a 200 North Oak Street property from residential to industrial, the site of a nicotine replacement gum manufacturing plant.
An attorney for the applicant, Martha Kalina, told the board the facility is the only approved nicotine chewing gum manufacturing operation in the United States and one of three in the world. She said the rezoning would involve no new building, no expansions and only minor site changes, including added landscaping and a modified parking lot.
Kalina said the property had a noise violation in June for exceeding the town's nighttime noise ordinance by three decibels, and that the applicant replaced an exhaust blower fan motor and installed a custom muffler. She said a town test on Sept. 10 found the site below the 55-decibel nighttime threshold, but that the town still plans a second nighttime inspection that had not yet been completed.
The town's environmental analyst, identified as Greg, said the site has had three noise violations over the past five to six years and that daytime and nighttime decibel limits differ, with nighttime held to a stricter 55-decibel standard.
A resident who lives near the plant described ongoing noise from the facility and said he has been reaching out to the town's environmental team to try to get it resolved. Another neighbor, Rosalind Bunn, said she has lived in her home for 30 years and still cannot get quiet even with windows closed.
Bunn said a neighboring family moved out within a year of buying a house across the street because of the noise, and asked whether rezoning to industrial would let the company avoid noise rules altogether. She also said she worried the change would affect her property's value.
Board members questioned the applicant's representative, Adam DeZamba of P&L Development, about the age of the noise-generating equipment and the company's maintenance system. One board member asked whether the applicant would agree to build a sound wall.
Kalina said covenants proposed with the application would let the town require additional sound mitigation, including a possible sound wall, if the noise problem continues after rezoning.
Board members pressed the applicant on the equipment's age, its maintenance practices and whether a sound wall could be built. DeZamba said the town had not yet completed the additional nighttime noise inspection but that it was scheduled.
Earlier in the meeting, the board closed a separate hearing on relocating a 198-seat IHOP restaurant into a former restaurant space on Montauk Highway, with no changes to seating or structure proposed. The board reserved its decision and voted to bring the application back next week for a vote.