There is nothing quite like the slow-motion humiliation of a small-town official caught in the amber of his own convenience. Donal Collins, supervisor of a municipality that could fit inside a Manhattan city block with room to spare, has spent the better part of a year making FOIL compliance feel like a personal affront. Three missed deadlines. A lawyer dispatched on a Saturday — a Saturday — to insist that no, no, this was not constructive denial of access. My reply? That’s for a judge to decide.

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The documents, when they finally materialized, were almost poignant in their thinness. Karen Carpenter thin, as they say. One mandatory disclosure for 2025, filed in March of 2026. And what it failed to disclose was the one thing everyone in town is already whispering about: the relationship between Collins and the Williams family, who claim 83 acres of farmland — all but the vineyard parcel, conveniently — is worked by Collins himself. Or so the story goes.

This was already simmering beautifully before the FOIL battle even began. In August 2025, a board member Jon Wapner had the temerity to email Collins directly, requesting a workshop discussion about what he politely characterized as a conflict of interest. He wanted it on the September 4th agenda. It never appeared. One imagines the agenda-setting process as something less than rigorous.

Meanwhile, the Williams were moving with the confidence of people who know exactly which levers to pull. Their application to enter Ag District 10 was already in motion, and Collins — who had announced he would not be voting on the matter — was cheerfully telling the Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board that yes, yes, farming was absolutely occurring at 509 Bashford Road. The investigative rigor behind that determination? A drive-by. Literally. A drive past the property and a note confirming: farm.

The county, as required by law, notified Collins that 509 Bashford Road had applied for inclusion on November 7th. He did not share this with the board. His reasoning, offered with the weary confidence of a man who has long confused his own interests with the public’s, was that he didn’t think he needed to.

The recusal, when it finally came, arrived without explanation. No rationale. No acknowledgment of the slow-building controversy, the reporting, the questions multiplying like kudzu. Late and unexplained, as so much of this has been.

The stakes, it turns out, are not small. With 509 Bashford inside an agricultural district, the Williams gain a significant legal cudgel — the ability to approach the state Department of Agriculture and Markets and effectively tie the town’s hands on the vineyard. This, one suspects, was always the destination. The scenic route just happened to run through Donal Collins.

The Fox Hill Vineyard file is a remarkable document of entitlement: flawed applications, neighbor opposition exceeding 60 letters, more than 200 signatures. A normal applicant might recalibrate. The Williams are not recalibrating.

A source in California who has worked with Ed and Cherie Williams offered this, unprompted: moving across the country to pursue their medical careers was simply the logistics of getting away from them. Working with them was always, always about money, and how to make more of it. They said they’re toxic.

I cannot say I was surprised.

©2026 All Rights Reserved | Josh@thepowellhousepress.com

As reported in the March 8th post of The Powell House Press, the Chatham Zoning Board of Appeals had decided at the last minute to “delay” their decision on 509 Bashford Road’s tasting room applicati…

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Tonight, the Town of Chatham receives the Zoning Board of Appeals decision on whether Ed and Cherie Williams can use their garage for something. Just what that use is? Good question, and now a largel…

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I wonder at times what happens when a person is elected to office and reason seems to fly out the window. I suppose it’s that same mental switch that allows them to think that if they ignore somethin…

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As the town of Chatham waits for the Zoning Board of Appeals to decide if the garage at 509 Bashford Road is appropriate as a subordinate structure — a tasting room for commercial use, for an unlicen…

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It seems that in more recent times America has developed almost an appetite for corruption — a certain tolerance for grift and a reverence for the rich. Toss in characters whose colors and flaws seem plagiarized from Tennessee Williams’ diary: A plastic surgeon and a wife named after a fortified wine, replete with a French twist. A northeast farmer with a Tulane education and the ethics of a bayou politician. A well-meaning collection of town elders who seem perplexed by a growing chorus of discontent from the townsfolk. Indeed, it seems almost literary. But it’s not a literary work; it’s real life. And maybe Chatham never had an appetite for any of this — maybe, just maybe, they had a tolerance. It could be that a desire to be neighborly was mistaken for something else. This could be less Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and more To Kill a Mockingbird, where true justice proves more durable than Big Daddy.

Justice has a biblical tone to it, doesn’t it? But strip away the Johns, Pauls, and the story of all the world’s creatures on a precursor to a Carnival Cruise, and justice becomes less abstract. It’s measured on a scale of laws: ones you abide by or the ones you break. Like a game of Jenga, the Williams have continued to pull out pieces of the legal tower to win the game, but now it’s worth looking at whether they have brought down the high-rise with their need to win.

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Indeed, Team Williams — and it does look like a team — have done a lot to win their coveted wedding venue. But was it clever, or was it simply breaking the law? If they broke the law, or bent it out of shape, if team members violated their ethical obligations, then the question becomes: how effective are the local powers that be in protecting the land and its citizens? Or will it take a judge?

You can compare their approach to the Planning Board, the ZBA, the Building Department and the County to a child who, denied screen time by Mommy, goes padding off to find Daddy. But here’s the thing: it’s not just that. What the Williams and their lawyers might have been doing actually has a name. It’s called “segmentation”, and it is illegal. I’ll get to that, and I’ll explain precisely why this whole affair is looking the way it’s looking. But before we dive into the deep end of the legal pool, let’s linger for a moment in the shallow end.

A Form Full of Something from a Bull, but no Cows in Sight

What exactly do you call it when someone lies on a government form, signs it, and submits it? I want to be specific. I’m talking about the 303-b application, the form filed to move a property into an agricultural district in Columbia County.

NY Penal Law § 175.30 — Offering a False Instrument for Filing in the Second Degree, which covers knowingly presenting a written instrument containing false information to a public office, with the expectation it will become part of the official record: a Class A misdemeanor. § 175.35 takes it further, to the First Degree, when that same act is carried out with intent to defraud the state or any political subdivision: a Class E felony.

Submitting one that contains false information? That’s considerably more than losing screen time for the weekend.

Last October, Cherie Williams filed her application to legitimize Fox Hill Vineyard as a real farm — Pinocchio fashion. Like much of what the Williams have “created,” the document had a familiar flair for invention. I know this because I have a copy of the signed and submitted application — the entire packet, obtained without a FOIL request. The County’s own Resolution 70-2026 required them to post it publicly, and they didn’t. A gentle nudge was all it took to get it emailed to me.

Now don’t jump to the conclusion that the packet was complete. Missing is a memo from the Agriculture and Farmland Protection Board stating its rationale for finding no environmental impact — a document that was supposed to be included. Coincidence? I don’t think so. Anything bearing Collins’s stamp tends to require something close to surgery to extract. The file itself, however, was illuminating.

There in all its PDF glory is document 303-b asking for inclusion into Agriculture District 10. It was filled out and signed by Cherie Williams, not Edwin. He doesn’t own the land, she does. This is not unusual – a lot of surgeons do this to protect their home – the wife is a safe harbor in stormy malpractice seas.

The numbers on the form read with the serene confidence of someone who never expected to be fact-checked: Total Acres of all parcel(s) to be included: 53.70. Total Acres Used for Agricultural Purposes: 51.7. No Cherie, no. A third of that land is woods and wetlands, the kind of quietly lovely, thoroughly unfarmed terrain that produces nothing more agricultural than atmosphere. The Williams are already pocketing a full tax exemption, courtesy of Donal Collins rolling up some hay bales on their behalf. The real number isn’t 51.7 acres of agricultural productivity. It’s closer to 5.17, a decimal point that somehow migrated rightward, taking the truth with it.

Tax minimization is, of course, a sport played enthusiastically across the social spectrum, from Park Avenue to the rural counties. One barely raises an eyebrow. But the creativity on display in Part 2 of the application is something else entirely — a work of pastoral fiction so ambitious it practically demands its own imprint.

Cherie Williams describes the property as “presently cleared of trees and primarily utilized for beef cattle operations,” managed by “Local Farmer Dunn Collins of Chatham, NY” for “grazing beef cattle and harvesting hay.” It reads like a brochure for an agritourism destination, doesn’t it. The only problem (and it is rather a significant one) is that there have never been cattle on this land during the Williams’s tenure. Nope, not a one. There hasn’t been a head of cattle on that land since I was a boy living down the road over 50 years ago. There is no fencing. The cattle exist exclusively on the form, which is to say, they do not exist at all. Not at 509 Bashford Road and that is the land at issue.

It’s Part 3 where the application really begins to unspool. Filed in October 2025, it claims 200 vines, not the 400 cited in the application submitted to the town of Chatham, and certainly not the 5,000 the Williams claimed to be planning in their December 5th, 2025 email to me. Numbers, it seems, are treated as suggestions in the Fox Hill universe, fluid and negotiable depending on the audience. An honest survey of the property tells a different story: roughly 20 acres consumed by house, woods, solar infrastructure, and wetlands. The credible agricultural footprint is somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 acres, not 51, not 53, not whatever figure best serves the application of the moment.

And then there is the matter of Old MacDonal who has no farm on Bashford Road. Donal Collins. Dunn Collins. Supervisor Collins. The Town Supervisor of the very municipality where all of this is unfolding, a detail that the form, in its chatty way, attempts to obfuscate or implicate. It is hard to tell. His dual role as both the agricultural steward of Fox Hill and the elected head of town government has been, to put it gently, a topic of animated private conversation — both in Hudson and Chatham. The question of who knew what and when about 509 Bashford Road’s ambitions has circulated at the level of knowing glances and careful phrasing. And a few questions continue to simmer. When did the town of Chatham know? Did they have an obligation to know? Was the County required to notify them before waving the property into Agricultural District 10?

Some members of the town board have apparently been genuinely uncertain on this last point, wondering aloud whether the notification obligation truly fell to the County and whether anyone in Chatham actually received it. The investigative rigor on display would not have taxed Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys — separate or sleuthing together.

The answer, it turns out, is printed right in Part 5 of the very application that Mrs. Williams — like Cher, only Cherie — signed, in language admirably free of ambiguity: “I further understand that all applications will be forwarded to the local municipality for comments.”

The form knew. And now, so does everyone else. If it is unclear to some readers let me make it plain: it became “town” business when the “town” was asked to comment.

Which brings us, with the inevitability of a bad renovation that keeps requiring new permits, to what this form and the attorney’s letter that followed it three months later actually prove when you set them side by side. Because the beauty of these two documents, read together rather than in the comfortable isolation each was designed for, is that they corroborate something with almost theatrical clarity. Something more significant than Cherie’s big little lies, they corroborate segmentation.

Segmentation: The Strategy That Breaks the Law

The State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), is New York’s primary environmental law. Before any government agency approves an action, it must first assess that action’s potential environmental impact. Full disclosure. Full review. Informed decision-making. The whole point is to look before you leap. It is, in other words, the precise opposite of what has been happening at 509 Bashford Road.

Segmentation is how applicants like the Williams try to game that system. The rule under SEQRA is that a project must be reviewed in its entirety. You cannot break a large, interconnected undertaking into smaller pieces and review each piece in isolation, as if the other pieces didn’t exist or weren’t planned. The regulations are unambiguous on this point. It is prohibited under 6 NYCRR § 617.3(g). Not discouraged. Not frowned upon. Prohibited.

The classic move goes like this. Rather than presenting a complete vision to a single reviewing body, applicants advance a project incrementally, across different phases, before different municipalities and agencies, over time. What begins as one modest application becomes, years later, something considerably different and often larger than any single board was ever asked to evaluate. Each body sees only what is in front of it at that moment. None is positioned to assess what the pieces add up to. The reviewing agency, seeing only the slice in front of it, sees nothing alarming and approves. Then the next slice. Then the next. Eventually a full project materializes, assembled from approvals that were each individually waved through without anyone ever reviewing what they added up to. The frog, as they say, does not notice the water heating.

Now look at the 303-b application. Filed in October 2025, it asks Columbia County to include 509 Bashford Road in Agricultural District 10. On its face it describes a modest farming operation: some hay, some cattle (phantom cattle, as we’ve established) and 200 vines (not 400 or 5000 according to Dr. Williams himself) on a fraction of an acre (not 51). The language is quietly bucolic. Nothing about this filing, reviewed on its own merits by the County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board, announces itself as the opening legal maneuver in a campaign to establish a commercial venue.

But buried in Part III is a sentence that rather gives the game away. The applicant describes the long-term intention as expanding the vineyard over the next four years, with rows mapped across the hillside in a “progressive planting strategy” designed to maximize sunlight, drainage, and air circulation for “premium grape production.” The scale of that ambition was made explicit by Dr. Williams himself in his December 5, 2025 email, where he disclosed the target of 5,000 vines — along with, for good measure, his farming expertise and his attention to following the law. Five thousand vines is not 200 any more than a garage is a tasting room. But this, the 5000, is nowhere to be found in the application process.

There is also the matter of proposed use and municipal permits/approvals required to establish this use, which the form specifically asks for. The answer filed: “The future plans for the property include expansion of the vineyard with the addition of a tasting room which was determined to be a permitted use by the Town of Chatham CEO.” The tasting room is disclosed, yes. The fact that there is no licensed winery nor a permit to sell wine? A disclosure that the tasting room approval was in active dispute, already the subject of a neighbor’s appeal, before the application was voted on — those are nowhere to be found. They exist with the grazing cows. The County board reviewing the 303-b sees a farm seeking agricultural district protection. It does not see a commercial winery seeking regulatory cover. It does not see the scope. It does not see the ongoing litigation. And remember, Donal Collins’s big lift was recusal — and only after the horse was out of the barn (and no, there are no horses on 509 Bashford either).

Then comes Lawrence Howard’s January 2026 letter to the Zoning Board of Appeals, which performs the opposite narrowing trick with equal elegance. Where the 303-b quietly buries the commercial ambitions beneath the pastoral language of fictional beef cattle and a one-man hay harvest, the Howard letter minimizes the tasting room until it is barely a whisper of an action. The proposal, the letter informs us, is limited to “the interior modification of an existing garage and the expansion of the parking area to accommodate around eight vehicles.” Gatherings of 15 to 20 people, no more than fifteen times per year, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. only. Nothing to see here. Note to YELP: sedans and minivans only.

And then the keystone argument: no site plan review required, because the tasting room is simply permitted as accessory use. This matters enormously. Site plan review is the mechanism through which SEQRA environmental review is typically triggered for projects of this kind. If the attorney can persuade the ZBA that the tasting room is an as-of-right agricultural use requiring no site plan review, then no SEQRA review ever gets conducted, not for the tasting room, not for the parking, not for the 5,000-vine expansion, not for whatever phase follows. The legal architecture depends entirely on keeping each piece below the threshold that would require the whole to be examined.

Place the two documents side by side and what emerges is a project that neither filing has fully disclosed to the body reviewing it. A 53-acre property in Chatham is being systematically repositioned from residential-agricultural to a functioning commercial winery: tasting room, expanded parking, 5,000-vine long-term plan, gatherings of up to 20 people fifteen times a year, and future phases presumably to follow. That project, reviewed honestly as a whole by any single body with SEQRA obligations, would require a coordinated environmental assessment: traffic, noise, drainage, water use, impacts on neighboring properties, cumulative effects across all phases.

Instead, the County is asked to consider only whether an over-estimated 51 acres of land should be included in an agricultural district. The Town ZBA is asked to consider only whether a garage conversion is an as-of-right accessory use. No single agency has been asked, or apparently permitted, to consider all of it together. That is not an accident. That is the strategy.

The applications are not independent. The agricultural district status obtained through the 303-b strengthens the argument that the tasting room is an agricultural use. The tasting room, once approved, anchors the case for the vineyard expansion. The vineyard expansion justifies the agricultural district inclusion. Each piece depends on the others. They were planned together and are being approved separately, which is, with the concision that legal language occasionally achieves, the definition of an impermissibly segmented project under SEQRA.

The Howard letter even inadvertently confirms the interdependence when it argues that wine production is an agricultural use regardless of where the grapes are processed. That argument only needs to be made if you are anticipating a scale of operation where the question becomes legally relevant. A farm stand selling jam does not require a three-page brief on the agricultural nature of off-site processing.

Courts in New York have consistently held that related actions must be reviewed together when they are part of a single plan, or when the approval of one is contingent on or connected to the approval of others. The test is not whether the applications were filed separately. The test is whether they are functionally interdependent pieces of a larger whole. The 303-b application’s own disclosure of the 4 year expansion plan makes it very difficult to argue otherwise. You cannot claim two actions are unrelated when one of them describes the future the other is designed to enable.

The mosaic has been assembled one tile at a time, with each tile presented to a different set of eyes. But the picture has been visible from the beginning, to anyone willing to look at all the tiles at once.

And the fragmentation of review is only part of the problem. Because a process this carefully constructed to avoid scrutiny depends on one additional condition: that the public never gets a clear look at any of it. As it turns out, that condition has been well maintained.

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This has been going on for over six years. Six years of shifting numbers, phantom cattle, and boards and offices handed single pieces of a puzzle that only makes sense whole. Six years during which the applicants have claimed, depending on the audience, everything from a modest hobby vineyard to a full commercial venue with tastings, weddings, and five thousand vines. And at least three of those years with Donal Collins — the Town Supervisor with an undisclosed relationship to the property — sitting at the head of the table while questions of notice, comment, and approval circulated beneath him like a current he preferred not to name.

And through all of it, there remains yet another structural failure that has operated in quiet service of the same outcome: the question of public notice.

The Notice That Notified Almost No One

At a recent Chatham Town Board meeting, Supervisor Collins offered what passed for a moment of transparency — or perhaps merely a deflection from the fact that he had shared none of this with the community or his board, as required by Resolution 72-24 (if you don’t know about Resolution 72-24 you can read it here). The county, he mentioned, was reviewing its notice policies. Expensive, he said. Questionable efficacy. It was the kind of offhand remark that invites no follow-up. But the efficacy, it turns out, is worth examining in some detail.

There is a legal requirement, before a property can be waved into an Agricultural District, that the public be notified. A hearing must be announced. The community must have the opportunity to weigh in. This is not a courtesy. It is the law. And in Columbia County, that legal obligation is discharged through publication in the local newspaper of record, the Columbia County Register Star.

Here is what that means in practice.

I reached out to the Register Star directly and communicated with a woman named Rhona. What she shared was instructive. The paper prints 4,600 copies total, distributed between Greene and Columbia Counties. Sixty percent, 2,760 copies, go to Columbia County. Of those, she told me, the majority stay in the city of Hudson.

So let’s be generous. Let’s say Hudson absorbs roughly half the Columbia County run, call it 1,400 copies, and the remaining 1,360 are distributed across the eighteen towns by household.

Chatham’s households number roughly 1,640, about 7.6 percent of the combined household count across those eighteen towns. Apply that share to 1,360 remaining papers and Chatham receives, at most, about 103 copies.

One hundred and three newspapers. For a town of four thousand people.

That is 2.5 percent of Chatham’s population, and that was the generous version. The real number, once you account for what actually stays in Hudson, is smaller still. We are now talking about a town being legally notified through a document that reached, on the most charitable arithmetic available, roughly 2.5 percent of its residents.

The notice was published, the box was ticked, and the hearing was announced — in the technical sense of the word. But whether anyone in Chatham actually saw it, understood that 509 Bashford Road was about to be folded into Agricultural District 10, or grasped what that inclusion was meant to enable, was another matter entirely. The 97.5 percent of town residents who never received a copy were left, as with so much in this affair, in the dark.

Supervisor Collins was right about one thing: the efficacy is questionable. What he did not mention is that a notice that reaches almost no one is not a flaw in this application — it is a feature of it. Segmented review, captured oversight, a public notice regime that functions as formality rather than genuine mechanism of public awareness: these are not separate failures that happened to coincide. They are the architecture. Each reinforces the others. Each depends on the others. And it is precisely what Collins, the Williams, and their lawyers have depended on from the beginning.

So here is where the Jenga tower lands. Not on the Williams. Not on the supervisor who somehow managed to be both the town’s elected steward and the man with an undisclosed business relationship with the very people whose application he was overseeing. It lands, as it always does in these arrangements, on the people who were never invited to the table — the residents of Chatham and Columbia County, whose tax dollars will now fund the legal defense of a flawed process engineered to benefit two people pursuing a vanity vineyard and a party venue, secretly shepherded through by a supervisor with a documented history of sidelining his fellow board members and a personal stake in the outcome.

Both municipalities are already late on their FOIL responses. That is not a footnote. Under New York law, that lateness is a constructive denial, and it means that any citizen with standing can walk into Supreme Court today and file an Article 78 proceeding to compel production — with attorney’s fees attached. The taxpayers of Chatham will pay those fees. The taxpayers of Columbia County will pay those fees. Donal Collins, depending on what a court makes of his rather remarkable arrangement — a town supervisor with an undisclosed connection to a property whose approvals repeatedly crossed his desk — may find that his official title offers less protection than he has assumed.

The legal exposure is real and it is layered: a potentially false instrument filed with the county, a SEQRA process that was never conducted, a notice regime that reached 2.5 percent of the town it was meant to inform, an administrative record missing its own required environmental justification, and a six-year segmentation strategy that New York courts have consistently refused to excuse regardless of how elegantly it was assembled.

But strip away the statutes and the case citations and what you have is simpler and older than any of it. A community’s trust was exploited.

Not that it matters to Dr. Williams. He made his position clear: he “doesn’t give a f*ck about what the neighbors think.” It is, in retrospect, the Rosetta Stone of this entire affair. A man that indifferent to the people around him doesn’t lose much sleep over what he tells them — or the boards that represent them, or the forms that require the truth under penalty of law. Indifference to people and indifference to facts travel together. They always have.

That indifference may yet prove more costly than any filing error or procedural overreach. Because Chatham was paying attention. The neighbors do give a f*ck. And so, as it turns out, do certain government agencies — think the NYS Comptroller, and yes, maybe even the Chatham Town Board.

This may not be the Bravo TV ending Ed and Cherie Williams wrote for themselves. But Chatham may yet get its To Kill a Mockingbird moment. True justice, as that title reminds us, has a way of being more durable than Big Daddy. Or, in this case, Donal.

Note: At the time of publication, the Town of Chatham had requested a six-day extension on the outstanding FOIL request; Columbia County indicated it was working on its response but offered no firm delivery date. They remain out of legal compliance (not that I’ll sue). The Chatham Town Board, the Planning Board, and the Zoning Board of Appeals, as well as the Columbia County Chairman, were each contacted for comment on multiple occasions. None responded.

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©2026 All Rights Reserved | josh@thepowellhousepress.com

Editorial Note: The original version of this post contained the wrong link to Resolution 72-24. The corrected link is now live in the article. You can also view it here.

Is it fair? Sit with that for a second. Is it fair that the residents of Bashford Road might have their lives, property, and peace of mind upended because Edwin Williams III and his wife Cherie want to throw weddings and sell wine?

Take your time. Everyone else has.

Here’s the second question, and it’s the bigger one: why have these neighbors had to wait years just to get an answer? The Town of Chatham’s Planning Board should have resolved this drama long ago. It didn’t because it couldn’t. The matter is now far more complicated than it ever needed to be, not by accident. By design. Each new disclosure sharpens the picture, and what’s coming into focus is not a vineyard story. It’s a plan. A methodical one. It has drawn in Chatham’s Planning Board, Building Department, Town Board, Zoning Board of Appeals, the Town Supervisor, the Town of Kinderhook’s Supervisor, the County Board of Supervisors, the Columbia County Agriculture and Farmland Protection Board, and Columbia County’s Soil and Water Conservation District Committee. For a quiet road in a small town, that is a remarkable list.

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But first, let’s kill a myth. Dr. Williams and his wife Cherie are not victims. Not by my pen, not by their neighbors’. And while we’re killing myths, let’s dispense with another one: the Williams are not farmers. He’s a surgeon. She works at his 52,000 square foot private surgery center. They don’t farm. They don’t support themselves off the land. The closest either of them gets to agriculture is the ornamental greenhouse next to the pool house.

If someone insists on funding the victim fiction, let’s at least name it correctly: self-created hardship. In a legal sense, and this part matters, the Williams don’t have a leg to stand on. When they bought their home in 2008 they knew the zoning. They knew the terms of living on Bashford Road. They are victimizing themselves. You don’t get a variance because you bought property with a plan the zoning doesn’t allow.

If that sounds like a shot across the Zoning Board of Appeals’ bow, it isn’t. As the kids say: them’s the facts.

I’ll come back to that, and to the on-the-record myths of Fox Hill Estate. But first, let’s talk about the three-dimensional chess that the Williams, their surrogates, and Town Supervisor Donal Collins have been playing. The pieces have been moving for a long time. It’s worth laying out the whole board. And don’t mistake this for a recap. There are new revelations, new rules being broken.

Rules. Laws.

Tomato, tomahto.

The Website That Said Everything

The goal was never farming. The record makes this clear.

The first move, the first community test, was the Fox Hill Estate website. No mention of a vineyard, because there wasn’t one. The site stayed live just long enough to do two things: alert the neighbors and leave a digital record of exactly what was intended. Want to know what that intention was? The website address was foxhillweddings.com. Mrs. Williams could be reached at foxhillweddings@gmail.com. How’s that for on the nose?

The site came down. The pivot began.

On September 8, 2020, the Williams approached the Planning Board with a new ask: a tasting room in their detached garage. They had a pending application with the NYS Liquor Authority, they said. They had planted vines, they said, though the number stayed vague. No new structures, no new buildings. Simple. The board asked about neighbors, parking, compliance with Ag & Markets rules. They asked for detailed plans and a site visit. The Williams said they’d be in touch.

They were not in touch. For nearly two years.

When Williams finally reappeared at the Planning Board in February 2022, he brought a story. The problem was that the story kept changing, and the parts that didn’t change couldn’t be verified.

Start with the two-year gap. Williams’ lawyer, William Better, blamed it on deliberations over which grapes to plant. Plausible, except that two years earlier the same board had been told vines were already in the ground. You cannot be deciding what to plant while simultaneously reporting that planting is done. Better then introduced Williams to the board. Dr. Williams wanted the board to meet him.

Williams laid out a farming history. Most of it couldn’t be verified. Mostly because, by all available evidence, there isn’t one.

Then came the vine count. Two hundred vines, Williams said. Then, in the same meeting, two hundred more. The number shifted mid-conversation without explanation or apparent embarrassment. This is worth pausing on: a vineyard’s vine count is not a detail a farmer misplaces. It is also, under New York State farm winery law, a figure with direct legal consequence, as production minimums depend on it. The casualness of the revision was its own kind of tell.

Williams also wanted the board to understand that Bashford Road was already a busy thoroughfare. FedEx trucks, he said, made seventy trips a day up and down it, offered as evidence that tasting room traffic would be unremarkable. What he did not offer was documentation. FedEx does not share its travel logs with the public, for safety and privacy reasons. What FedEx did share: the average driver covers between 75 and 125 deliveries across an entire territory in a single day. For one rural road in Columbia County to account for 70 of those stops, it would have to consume nearly a driver’s entire route.

Then there were the neighbors. Chairperson Sperry asked if Williams had spoken to them. Williams said he had — naming the Mitchisons, who run heavy equipment on the road, as the neighbors across the road he had consulted.

The Mitchisons don’t live across the road. Jay and May Levine do. They are on the record stating they were so troubled by the proposal that if it goes through, they were considering selling their home. A man who claims to care about his neighborhood might lead with that detail. The Mitchisons are not on the record supporting the project. No one is.

Finally, Everett asked if this was their primary residence. Yes, Williams said. For 25 years. Public records show they purchased the property in 2008. That’s fourteen years, not twenty-five. This is not a rounding error. It is an error with a purpose: the longer you’ve lived somewhere, the more sympathetic you appear when trying to fix your zoning hardship. The actual number is considerably less sympathetic than the one Williams gave. Like almost everything else in this saga, the record is riddled with half-truths and conflicting information.

How to Make a Problem Disappear

Tedious doesn’t begin to cover it. And here’s the thing: the Williams must have felt the same way. What about the liquor license application from 2020? What about a proper site plan? An environmental study, the kind the Silver Brothers on Shaker Museum Road actually submitted when they went through this process? Those 70 FedEx trucks?

Good questions. No good answers. So the Williams did what people do when a process isn’t going their way: they stopped engaging with it. No environmental studies were completed. A traffic study was conducted in winter, months before any planned weddings or wine tastings. The application eventually expired. The town returned their escrow deposit. Publicly it was over.

Privately it was not.

The Second Act

In the fall of 2025, the project came back, publicly. Cleaner this time. Much cleaner. And it had the support of Donal Collins, the Town Supervisor of Chatham, privately. Useful, but a politician in your corner doesn’t neutralize a Planning Board. The Zoning Board of Appeals, however, is another matter.

Here’s what happened. While the Williams’ vineyard plan, in all its morphing glory, reappeared before the Planning Board, Williams quietly approached the building department and received a permit for his tasting room. He just had engineers file for it. Approved. When that approval was challenged, the Planning Board had no option but to refer it to the ZBA. And once the ZBA takes jurisdiction, the Planning Board is out. A ZBA decision, if approved, could only be challenged in New York State Supreme Court through an Article 78 proceeding. Not only would opponents have to sue, they’d have to hire an attorney, upwards of $15,000. The town would have to defend it at $175 an hour. The Williams’ cost? Zero.

Brilliant. Spending other people’s money is a powerful deterrent. It was also a deliberate distraction.

While residents organized, wrote letters, and focused on what was in front of them, the Williams in October quietly went to Columbia County and filed an application to fold their property into a New York State Agriculture District. The property is one where a sliver of vineyard occupies less than one percent of the acreage, with a mansion taking up the rest. Inclusion in Ag District 10 would bring substantial cover under Agriculture and Markets law. That coverage includes, among other things, protections for event hosting. Like, say, weddings.

The notice appeared in the agate section of the Columbia County Register-Star, which is no longer a daily. Most people missed it. They thought this was a town fight, not a county one.

See the Petition Here

The Lone Wolf

One person who did not miss it: Town Supervisor Donal Collins. The same Collins who has a business relationship with Williams, using 509 Bashford Road (a.k.a Fox Hill Estate and Vineyard, a.k.a. FoxHillWeddings.com) for hay production and cattle grazing. The same Collins who did not disclose that relationship to the town or the county in writing as required by law.

The same Collins who only recused himself on February 19, 2026, after he had already weighed in officially at both the town and county levels. When asked point-blank why he hadn’t disclosed his recusal or conflict earlier, his response was: “I didn’t have to.”

After a cursory look at the town’s laws, Collins seemed to be correct, at least about reporting his county interactions (the conflict remains…a conflict), but he did toss the board and the public a bone: he said he’d disclose all county business issues in the future. The response seemed rehearsed. It should have — the conflict had already been reported in this column. So had his county-level activity. Combined, that coverage had been read, shared, and seen more than 100,000 times: twenty-five times the population of the entire Town of Chatham. His disclosures disclosed nothing. It seemed he knew the question was coming. And as reported earlier, Collins’ recusal was irregular and not in accordance with the law.

What was not discussed at the Town Board meeting was that this was not Collins’ first transparency rodeo. The board had seen this behavior before: a supervisor who kept his county-level activity to himself, who treated what he did at the county as nobody else’s business.

Ergo Resolution 72-24

In 2024, the board decided to make it their business. They proposed Resolution 72-24, requiring that Collins’ monthly report include “an update containing pertinent information from the County Board of Supervisors and any County Committees the Town Supervisor sits on.” The purpose was not complicated: keep the board informed about what their supervisor was doing on their behalf at the county level.

Collins tried to kill it. He argued passage would trigger a referendum, upend twenty years of established practice, and generally cause chaos. He was the only one who seemed to feel that way. The resolution passed. Collins cast the lone nay vote.

He then proceeded to violate it.

He did not tell the Town Board that the Williams property was moving through the Agriculture and Farmland Protection Board. He did not tell them that County Resolution 70-2026 was naming 509 Bashford Road for inclusion in Ag District 10. And he did not tell them, and this is where it gets sharp, that he remained an active participant in the Columbia County Agriculture and Farmland Protection Board’s (AFPB) deliberations on that very application in November 2025.

What the AFPB signed off on is significant. They determined that the Fox Hill project would have no meaningful environmental impact. That determination was the green light for 509 Bashford's inclusion in Ag District 10. Consider what they were being asked to waive through: a property with a DEC wetland at its base, a vineyard perched on a hill above it, bringing with it documented pesticide loads and soil erosion risk that such operations are known to carry.

There's more. Consider it the cherry on this particular irony sundae — and it does not appear anywhere in the Chatham Town record: in January 2025, Collins was appointed to Columbia County's Soil and Water Conservation District committee.

The SWCD is not a ceremonial post. It is a state-created local government body that exists specifically to address land stewardship: erosion control, wetland protection, agricultural runoff, stormwater management, conservation planning. Every county in New York has one. Collins’ appointment gave him standing on precisely the environmental questions that should have triggered the most scrutiny of the Williams property. It also gave him, within the AFPB proceedings, a credibility on soil and environmental risk that other members would have had every reason to defer to.

So the question just sits there. It is not subtle.

How does a man who profits from an undisclosed relationship with 509 Bashford Road — who is supposed to represent the residents of his town, who sits on the AFPB, who sits on the county’s Soil and Water Conservation District, who knows the property at the center of all this conflict sits on a DEC wetland, and who is obligated to know that vineyards carry documented erosion and pesticide risk — how does that man sign off on a review concluding there is no meaningful environmental impact, in writing, without raising a single flag?

And then not mention any of it to the board he is legally required to keep informed?

It is a great question. It deserves a straight answer. Collins has been asked. He has not provided one.

The Resolution That Wasn’t Posted as Promised

County Resolution 70-2026 is now on the books. It names Edwin and Cherie Williams and their property at 509 Bashford Road. It folds the property into Agriculture District 10, lending agricultural standing to an estate where a vineyard occupies roughly one percent of the land and the rest is mansion. The business operating there goes by Fox Hill Winery. It does not appear in the New York State business registry.

The resolution is required to include a SEQRA Environmental Assessment Form. That form is required to be posted publicly on the county website — the county’s own resolution says so. The resolution is there. The environmental assessment is not. And how is the public supposed to know what’s in it? The county has an answer for that: file a FOIL request and wait. That’s not transparency.

The ZBA’s ruling on the Williams tasting room application was scheduled for release on February 26th. An hour before the meeting, the item was pulled from the agenda. Chairman Persing gave a specific reason: the board hadn’t had time to write it up. He noted, with some deliberateness, that the board had 62 days from the close of the public hearing to issue its decision under New York State Town Law §267-a(8). Accurate. Interesting timing to flag it.

More interesting is what a source familiar with the board’s internal deliberations shared afterward off the record. The board had initially been prepared to approve the tasting room. Then came the scrutiny, the letters, the public attention, and the mounting recognition of a fundamental problem. Under New York ABC Law §76-a, a farm winery must be located on a farm where wine is actually manufactured. A tasting room, the one the Williams want, is an accessory use to a winery. Fox Hill has no farm winery license. Without the license, there is no winery. Without the winery, there is nothing to be accessory to. There is a house. There is a garage. The write-up, when it comes, is now rumored to end in denial.

Supervisor Collins was required, under Resolution 72-24 passed by his own board in February 2024 and under the plain obligations of his office, to disclose his recusal in writing and to keep the Town Board informed of everything he was doing at the county level on a matter directly affecting a constituent property in his town. His claim at the February 19, 2026 Town Board meeting that no such obligation existed is not accurate.

Whether the town addresses Collins’ conduct remains to be seen. Whether the county pulls back its resolution rather than defend it is an open question.

The battlefield is expanding. Residents are more willing than ever to fight, and the terrain is shifting toward State Supreme Court and the New York State Comptroller’s Office.

Ed and Cheri Williams soldier on. Behind them: damaged careers, bad blood, and a reputation in freefall in a very small town where everyone is watching and no one is forgetting.

A Williams win, at this point, seems like a very long shot. Which raises the question: is the grape juice worth the squeeze? This is, after all, New York State wine. Better can be found in a box.

Link to Collins’ Appointment to Columbia County’s Soil and Water Conservation District committee

Link to Columbia County Resolution 70-2026 sans SEQRA Environmental Assessment Form

Columbia County Code of Ethics

Town of Chatham — Town Board

Donal Collins, Town Supervisor supervisor@chathamnewyork.gov

Angus Eaton, Deputy Town Supervisor aeaton@chathamnewyork.gov

Lisa Simonetti, Councilmember lsimonetti@chathamnewyork.gov

John Wapner, Councilmember jwapner@chathamnewyork.gov

Rick Werwaiss, Councilmember rwerwaiss@chathamnewyork.gov

Zoning Board of Appeals

Trish Fallon, ZBA Clerk zoning@chathamnewyork.us

Planning Board

Erin Reis, Planning Board Clerk planning@chathamnewyork.us

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Writer’s Notebook: My original plan was straightforward: examine the pesticide load that a commercial vineyard in the Northeast would impose on 509 Bashford Road and the surrounding area, a parcel perched on a steep hill next to a DEC-designated wetland, and ask what an agriculturally zoned property can actually get away with in terms of tasting rooms, weddings, and live bands. I also wanted to explore what happened just a mile from the Columbia County border on Jefferson Hill Road in Rensselaer County, where residents are already living through a strikingly similar situation after the Sanford farm transformed into S and S Brewery.

Those stories are still here. But events at last week’s Chatham Town Board meeting blew the scope wide open. What Supervisor Collins disclosed about his own conduct at the county level, and his use of official email to assert that agricultural zoning would not strip the Town of its authority, turned a story about land use into something far more troubling. This article is now about the details that residents of Chatham need to understand: how a small-government apparatus of back-scratching, procedural shortcuts, and selective silence produced a decision that may be legally indefensible.

Understanding How the Columbia County Board of Supervisors Works

The Columbia County Board of Supervisors (CCBS) is not a body of separately elected county officials. Each seat belongs to whoever holds an elected position in one of the county’s towns, along with representatives from the City of Hudson’s elected leadership. Nobody runs for a board seat on the County Board of Supervisors. They inherit the role. And crucially, not every vote carries the same weight. Each member’s vote is weighted by population. Like Orwell’s Animal Farm: "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". The supervisors from larger towns aren’t just participants in county decisions. They’re gatekeepers.

Why the county is involved and what they decided are two horns on the same bull. First, the Town of Chatham cannot create an Agricultural District: the legal mechanism does not exist; it is a NY State designation generated and recommended by the county. While the Town can issue a variance for "accessory use," that's a minor accommodation compared to inclusion in a NYS Agricultural District, which comes loaded with sweeping state-backed protections. Weddings, live music, festivals, crop spraying, all of it becomes permissible under the ag umbrella. That's why the county's decision to include a property in an Agricultural District is not a bureaucratic formality. It's a seismic shift in what a landowner can do and what neighbors have to live with.

In January 2026, the CCBS voted to include 509 Bashford Road, located in the Town of Chatham, in Agricultural District 10. It is now awaiting approval from the NYS Department of Agriculture. The state has 30 days to sign off on the property's inclusion from the date of submission. It may have also included the Williams property on Richmond Road. It's difficult to know for certain, because the county posted only a vague notice that an application had been filed for properties in District 10.

The second reason is that the Williams applied to have their property to be included as agricultural quietly in October while most of the residents opposed to the project assumed it was a town issue, not just because there was a continuing legal battle in front of the Town’s Zoning Board of Appeals; Supervisor Collins had represented officially that the town would retain jurisdiction. This is not a small detail. Those who knew were told the change was meaningless.

But to fully appreciate these details, and the profoundly troubling decision-making on the county's part, including issuing a determination that SEQR, the mandatory environmental review, should be waived because of no environmental impact, and disregarding the fact that commercial enterprises of this nature typically lower neighboring property values and erode the local tax base, you have to know what happened at the February 19th Chatham Town Board meeting.

February 19th, 2026: The Chatham Town Board Meeting

The meeting started much like a trip to my grandmother's after one of her exotic trips: with a slide show of various and random visits to places that seemed relevant, I suppose, but unimportant. As Mr. Collins clicked through slide after slide of activities he'd been involved in over the prior month, I couldn’t help but feel as if he was running the clock, hoping the two-hour session would expire before the inevitable subject arose: 509 Bashford Road. But to his credit, or perhaps his miscalculation, Collins acknowledged at the top of his "Town and County" report that he'd get to that topic and to public statements.

It was during this portion that he slipped in a pivotal piece of information, almost in passing: Columbia County was looking at better ways to provide public notice. One sentence. That was it. But it was a startling admission, and here’s why. I had previously approached the county about their notice policies specific to the agricultural zoning change of 509 Bashford, questioning whether the Register Star’s circulation met the legal standard. The county replied that they were in compliance and left it there. I then submitted a FOIL request that effectively put Columbia County on notice that there may be an issue of inadequate notice. So when Collins casually mentioned the county was rethinking its notice procedures, it amounted to a concession by a sitting member of the Board of Supervisors that the county’s notice practices are questionable.

It's also not the only notice provision that the county was required to satisfy. By law, the county, when making this change, must provide written notice to the affected municipality, in this case the Town of Chatham. Who received this notice? I contacted the county, and they promptly replied that they had followed all legal procedures. If they did, someone at the town had to know about this matter.

In early January, the CCCB held a public hearing to include 509 Bashford into a NYS Agricultural District. It is not clear if Collins was at this hearing. Later in the month, the CCBS met again and passed the motion. Collins was not in attendance.

At the Chatham Town Board meeting on February 19th, Collins claimed that he had recused himself and had not attended the Columbia County Board of Supervisors meeting where 509 Bashford was voted on for inclusion in an Ag District. Only then did he acknowledge what many on Bashford Road already knew and I had reported: he has a relationship with Dr. Williams. Collins uses Williams' land at 509 Bashford to grow hay. He also uses Williams' other parcel, at the corner of Richmond and Bashford, for his cattle. On its face, the timing of the admission is stunning. Collins did not, however, disclose the terms of this arrangement or how long it has been in place. Is it a formal lease? A handshake deal? A paid arrangement? Something else entirely? The public doesn't know, because Collins didn't say.

When a fellow board member asked why Collins had never disclosed his recusal from the county vote, Collins responded: “I don’t have to.” On one narrow, technical level, that is correct. The Town of Chatham would need a resolution in its own rules requiring such disclosure. Collins’ answer appeared informed by legal counsel or recent personal research on this specific point. It was defensive and absolute, but delivered with a speed and precision that suggested he had anticipated the question. Collins knew the “right” answer.

But what his analysis conveniently omits is state law, which supersedes town rules and local ethics codes. Collins’ recusal stems from a conflict of interest, and that conflict did not materialize on the day of the county vote to include the property in an Agricultural District. The conflict existed from the moment the matter first arose, requiring him to recuse himself not just from that single meeting, but from all involvement going back to at least October, when the application to include 509 Bashford Road in an Agricultural District was first brought before the county. That application would have come across Collins’ desk in his capacity as a member of the county’s Agriculture and Farmland Protection Board (AFPB), the body required by law to review the application and make recommendations on environmental impact to the Columbia County Board of Supervisors. The AFPB review and recommendation is not discretionary. It is a legal requirement.

And what about Collins’ legal disclosure requirements that may have gone unmet? It’s a two-pronged issue.

At the state level, General Municipal Law Section 803 requires that a municipal officer who has an interest in any actual or proposed contract publicly disclose the nature and extent of that interest in writing to his immediate supervisor and to the governing body of the municipality. That written disclosure must be included in the official record of the governing body’s proceedings. Based on what was disclosed at the February 19th town meeting, Collins’ acknowledgment was verbal, partial, and did not include the terms or duration of his arrangement with Dr. Williams. Whether that satisfies Section 803’s written disclosure requirement is a legal question, but the statute is clear on its face: the disclosure must be in writing and entered into the record. If no such written disclosure exists in the county’s records, the deficiency is not merely procedural—under Section 805 of the General Municipal Law, any municipal officer or employee who willfully and knowingly violates the provisions of Article 18 shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.

At the local level, General Municipal Law Section 803 applies as well. Moreover, the Town of Chatham has its own Code of Ethics, adopted in 2012 under Chapter 9 of the town code, requiring that any member of the Town Board or officer or employee of the Town who participates in discussion or gives an official opinion on any germane legislation publicly disclose on the official record the nature and extent of any direct or indirect financial or other private interest in that matter.

Collins’ legal two-step may have done more than just shoot himself in the foot. It jeopardizes the Town Board’s position that the inclusion of 509 Bashford in an Agricultural District was not a Town Board matter. His unprompted recusal prompted a fellow board member to ask why they had never been notified, and the implication was clear: the Town Board has oversight responsibility, and that oversight was never triggered. How could it have been? They knew nothing about Collins’ recusal. In fact, the Town Board requested that in the future Collins inform them of such matters. That request, even made casually, is an implicit acknowledgment of their oversight role. Second, by recusing himself from the county’s deliberations without securing a surrogate, the responsibility for representing Chatham’s interests at the county level defaulted to the Town Board itself. The same board that claims the matter is not its concern is the board that inherited the duty to act when its supervisor stepped aside, once again without telling anyone, thus depriving the town and its residents of a voice in this consequential decision.

It was stunning to watch. But the slow-motion wreck wasn’t over.

The board then raised the subject of a pending FOIL request, noting there was “one” outstanding and acknowledging that the town had some “compliance issues” with FOIL. I assumed they were talking about my request. Where I got confused was the board’s discussion of whether “committees” were subject to FOIL. I never asked for committee records. I asked for Town and Zoning Board of Appeals records, a distinction that matters enormously, because case law on FOIL and municipal bodies is well settled. I knew the town had received my request because Beth Anne Rippel, the Town Clerk, had acknowledged it.

It was later confirmed to me that the FOIL request the board was discussing that evening was not mine at all. It was related to the Finance Committee, and was apparently significant enough to prompt the town to consult other municipalities, including New Lebanon, about their FOIL practices. Beth Anne Rippel, the Town Clerk, acknowledged receipt of my FOIL request on February 13, 2026. Yet at the February 19th meeting, the board discussed only one outstanding FOIL request. Did the board know that there was another?

The implications of these developments are head-spinning, and their consequences for the town and county are significant. But before I lay those out, you need to understand the real environmental stakes of Fox Hill Vineyards and the land itself.

The Environmental Impact of Vineyards in the Northeast

A 5,000-vine commercial vineyard in the Northeast, the kind proposed for 509 Bashford Road in Columbia County, typically occupies three to five acres at standard vine spacing. The region’s humidity and rainfall create relentless disease pressure: downy mildew, powdery mildew, black rot, phomopsis, and botrytis. To keep these at bay, conventional operations spray 10 to 15 times per season, every 7 to 14 days from bud break through veraison. The chemical load is staggering.

Fungicides make up the bulk of it. The workhorses are captan, mancozeb (Dithane), myclobutanil (Rally), and mefenoxam (Ridomil), delivering roughly 3 to 6 pounds of active ingredient per acre per season, totaling 12 to 30 pounds across the vineyard each year. On top of that come insecticides: two to four targeted sprays for Japanese beetles, grape berry moth, leafhoppers, and spotted lanternfly, adding another 2 to 6 pounds of active ingredient. Neonicotinoids like imidacloprid and dinotefuran are the chemicals of choice for spotted lanternfly. Then there are the herbicides: glyphosate or paraquat applied under the vines for weed control, once or twice a season, contributing 2 to 5 more pounds. All told, a conventional Northeast vineyard puts approximately 15 to 40 pounds of active chemical ingredient into the environment every single season. The Williams have been clear: this is a legitimate “farming” enterprise needing commercial farm protection, and with a legitimate vineyard, pesticides are a given.

Then there are the pollinators. Neonicotinoids used for spotted lanternfly and Japanese beetle control are devastating to bee populations, even at sublethal doses. These chemicals are systemic. They enter pollen and nectar, so even vineyards not directly spraying over hives contribute through drift. Fungicides including boscalid and pyraclostrobin impair bee health by disrupting gut microbiomes and increasing susceptibility to parasites and pathogens. The synergistic effects are particularly alarming. Fungicide-insecticide combinations are more toxic together than either chemical alone. Boscalid doubles the toxicity of clothianidin and thiamethoxam to honeybees. DMI (azole) fungicides block bee detoxification enzyme pathways, amplifying the lethality of pyrethroids and neonicotinoids. Cornell’s McArt Lab is currently investigating what may be the largest honeybee colony die-off in U.S. history, with early indicators suggesting neonicotinoid exposure as a possible cause.

All of this becomes dramatically worse when you factor in the site itself. A slope exceeding 15 degrees, roughly a 27% grade, accelerates runoff velocity and erosion to dangerous levels. Erosion rates on cultivated slopes above 15% without adequate ground cover can exceed 5 to 10 tons of soil per acre per year. Under-vine herbicide strips create bare-soil corridors that act as express lanes for contaminated runoff. Standard vineyard row orientation, running up and down the slope for tractor access, creates channels that funnel chemicals directly downhill. On a slope this steep, contaminated runoff can travel significant distances.

And at the bottom of that slope sits a DEC-designated wetland. Fungicides like mancozeb and captan are highly toxic to amphibians, aquatic invertebrates, and fish at parts-per-billion concentrations. Copper and manganese from fungicide applications accumulate permanently in wetland sediments. Glyphosate runoff disrupts the plant communities that define and sustain the ecosystem. Neonicotinoids are water-soluble and persistent, detected in wetlands near agricultural land at concentrations harmful to aquatic insects.

Research in the EU found that vineyards situated within 500 meters of a river act as point sources of contamination. The vineyard proposed for 509 Bashford Road wouldn’t be 500 meters from a wetland. It would be right on top of one, on a slope steep enough to deliver every drop of chemical runoff straight into protected waters. Under New York’s State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR), any government agency taking a discretionary action must assess its potential environmental impact. If the action may cause significant adverse effects, an Environmental Impact Statement is required before approval. SEQR exists precisely for situations like this, where a government decision could inflict measurable harm on sensitive ecosystems, and where the public deserves a transparent accounting of those risks before anything is approved. Yet somehow, the county determined that no such review was warranted.

Let that sink in. A proposed 5,000-vine commercial vineyard on a slope exceeding 15% grade, surrounded by DEC-designated wetlands, and the county concluded there would be no meaningful environmental or community impact. A conclusion arrived at in November by the AFPB and referenced on the record by the Columbia County Attorney at the February 11, 2026, Board of Supervisors meeting.

Courts have established that the threshold for requiring an Environmental Impact Statement is deliberately low. The resolution adopted by the Columbia County Board of Supervisors, based on the AFPB recommendation, could be vulnerable on two fronts: it may have been issued despite evidence meeting that low threshold for significant impact, and it may not satisfy the "hard look" doctrine, the judicially established standard requiring lead agencies to meaningfully engage with environmental evidence before making a SEQR determination.

Missing in Action

Collins was not the only one absent from the Columbia County Board of Supervisors meeting that added 509 Bashford to an Agricultural District. Kinderhook Town Supervisor Tim Ooms was also missing. Their committee assignments at the county level are directly relevant. Collins chairs the Health & Human Services committee and serves on Public Works. Ooms is Deputy Chair of Economic Development, which oversees agriculture, Soil & Water, and the Cornell Cooperative Extension. Together, their weighted votes comprise 20% of the board’s decision-making power. While their presence alone might not have been enough to block the inclusion, it would have signaled concern to the rest of the board. Collins, who sits on the AFPB, could have challenged the faulty determination that this project would have no environmental impact. Given their respective committee work, it is difficult to believe that neither would have recognized the dangers this decision posed to the community and the environment.

The notice the county posted concerning additions to Agricultural District 10 was vague, and what remains unknown is whether the inclusion extends to Williams’ other parcel of land at the corner of Richmond and Bashford Roads, a parcel Collins also uses. If it does, the impact on Richmond Road residents deepens considerably, compounding the problem for those living at the very intersection. That section of land could host bands, hayrides, day camp activities, and even temporary structures like glamping tents, the kind of boutique agritourism operation already operating at Liberty Farms in Ghent, just miles away, where agricultural district protections shield such uses from local zoning restrictions.

What is known is that both men were absent for a consequential county decision that, if allowed to stand, will permanently alter a community of historic value. Columbia County is one of the epicenters of dirt roads in New York State and has a volunteer preservation group dedicated to protecting them. The significance of these roads has been covered in detail by the New York Times.

Due Diligence: the Problem up the Road

What has become clear is that Mr. Collins did nothing to foster discussions about the matter of 509 Bashford Road with any of the residents on Bashford, Brown, Richmond, and Reed roads. If he had, he surely would have known that there is no one on the record supporting the Williams’ project. Of course he can claim he didn't know about the controversy. Sure, the matter predated his term, and yes there was an ongoing legal dispute with representation against the original Town's decision to grant accessory use to the Williams. That matter is now pending before the Chatham Zoning Board of Appeals. And of course he does "farming" business with Dr. Williams, and of course he eventually recused himself from the matter without anyone in town knowing about it. The claim of ignorance seems flimsy. But if it were the only property that has used the Ag and Markets regulations to open a commercial entertainment venue, it might be understandable, though difficult to accept. But it is not the first of its kind locally.

On Jefferson Hill Road, just a mile from the Columbia County border in Rensselaer County, this very scenario has already played out. Like the proposed Fox Hill Vineyard, S & S Brewery, owned by the Sanford family, sits on a dirt road. Unlike 509 Bashford, the Sanfords’ property has been agriculturally zoned for decades. The Sanfords reinvented their struggling farm into what many told me on background has become a local nightmare.

I spoke with three homeowners who were initially supportive when the family started a GoFundMe page to repair their aging barn. Donations poured in. No one knew the fundraising was actually meant to finance a brewery, bar, wedding destination, live music venue, and visiting food truck operation. It was, according to residents, a shock.

“What’s been happening on Jefferson Hill is like watching a movie preview before the feature,” one resident on Bashford Road shared with me.

According to multiple residents who spoke on background, traffic on the dirt road has exploded. Visitors have parked on the road and on private property. The Sanfords have used crime tape to divert traffic. Residents described fights and public lewdness, including urination, that they say resulted in police visits. The New York State Liquor Authority has also been contacted. According to these residents, the SLA was called in part because the Sanfords had a Budweiser tap, which is not permitted under their licensing requirements; products must be farm-produced or sourced from other New York State craft breweries. Residents say the Sanfords told the SLA the tap was for water, an account independently confirmed by an SLA contact who wishes to remain anonymous. Frustrated, residents went to the town seeking answers. The town claimed ignorance. Residents filed FOIL requests to understand how any of this could have happened. It was all futile. The town could do little. Every activity advertised on the Sanfords’ website is permitted under the Agriculture and Markets Law.

It is hard to believe that someone who claims to know the New York State Agriculture Commissioner, as Collins stated at the last town meeting, would not know about the law or the controversy right up the road. Collins is very active in local farm-related activities. I learned about the S & S situation from a website called Nextdoor, in a warning thread to Chatham residents.

But of course, Mr. Collins can claim he didn’t know. Far-fetched, but he can claim it. What he cannot claim, however, is ignorance of the concerns raised by the people who voted him into office. Residents contacted him about the issue, and he assured them that nothing would change. He put that assurance in writing using his official town email, telling a resident that the town would continue to have jurisdiction. This is not true.

Accessory Use, Good Faith, and the Zoning Board of Appeals

The Williams have been dogged in their pursuit to remake their property into a commercial enterprise and have used both the town and the county to do so. On Thursday, a decision is expected from the Chatham Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) on whether to allow their detached garage to be used as a “tasting” room. It’s been an odd process to say the least.

The Williams’ desire to host events at their residential property is well documented. Their applications and a website posted years ago first raised the neighborhood’s concerns. What is not clear from the applications, their lawyers’ and engineers’ public arguments, or Dr. Williams’ own written statements is what this accessory use is actually for and the full scope of its impact on the neighborhood.

The decision before the ZBA, based on what has been made public, is a tasting room for a product that does not exist, on a property that lacks handicapped access, parking, restrooms, and alcohol permits. The property itself is in violation of state law and safety ordinances, with an unfenced pool in close proximity to the proposed tasting room.

In his December letter, Dr. Williams claimed he is always in compliance with the law. He alluded to expertise in farming, citing his attendance at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and after-school work on farms. He suggested there is no environmental risk and claimed to be working with Cornell Cooperative Extension specifically on this project, citing the quality of the soil.

Color this any way you want, but Dr. Williams is planning to sell a known carcinogen to the public. Alcohol is classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. The cancers it causes are treated by otolaryngology. Dr. Williams is a board-certified otolaryngologist.

Cornell University and the Cornell Cooperative Extension have been at the forefront of vineyard research and have raised red flags on soil erosion and pesticide use, including associated pollution affecting beehives, other pollinators, waterways, and wetlands, specifically in the Northeast and New York. They are clear about the erosion risks associated with steep gradients, as detailed in county maps and reports bearing Donal Collins’ name.

Dr. Williams, according to an appearance on his wife’s podcast, studied chemistry. It is hard to imagine he does not understand the implications of common pesticides used in commercial vineyards.

Given all of this, from the county to the Town of Chatham to the ZBA to the Williams themselves, there are so many shadows, irregular actions, failures to disclose, and a constantly shifting undisclosed plan for 509 Bashford that no governing body can make or has made an informed or transparent decision.

Article 18 of the General Municipal Law is not the only legal exposure at play. Beyond the conflict-of-interest provisions already discussed, New York courts have long held that public officers owe a fiduciary duty of loyalty and good faith to the communities they serve. That duty is not a mere ethical aspiration; it is a judicially enforceable standard. Courts have invalidated the actions of municipal boards where members’ conduct, even absent a literal violation of Article 18 or a local code of ethics, violated the spirit and intent of the statute, ran counter to public policy, or suggested self-interest, partiality, or economic impropriety.

The conduct documented here, the undisclosed financial relationship, the selective recusal, the county’s waiver of environmental review, the questionable notice practices, does not exist in a single legal silo. It invites challenge under the conflict-of-interest statutes, under SEQR, under Article 24’s wetland protections, and under the common-law fiduciary duty that every elected official in this process accepted when taking office. The path to legal action, including an Article 78 proceeding against the town and county, now looks less like a narrow lane and more like a highway. And all of these costs will be borne by taxpayers, not Dr. Williams.

Set aside the laws, the process, and the good-faith issues for a minute. Does anyone really think 509 Bashford Road is a legitimate farm? Over 53 acres, a mansion, a pool house, a non-commercial greenhouse, an extra garage, and 400 immature grape vines occupying less than one percent of the property. No barn. No valuable farm equipment. No livestock. No crop. The intended product is not food but alcohol. And for all the headache, bad blood, and questions, the Williams get a tax break. Their neighbors, meanwhile, fear their property values and quality of life will decline.

Given everything that is now known, how are the fiduciary, environmental, oversight, and ethical obligations of all the elected officials involved being met?

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This story once had a blast radius. Today, all of the people involved are dead. This is the true story of just how things can happen in Columbia County, New York, because they did. It is more than just a story of small-town justice or the lack thereof. It is about corruption even though well intentioned. And the players involved, well-known names, were not looking for tax breaks or personal profits.

To understand how a woman was killed and the man responsible was charged with manslaughter, but walked free and mentioned only once in a buried blurb in the Register Star, you have to understand what war did to men and the loyalty it bred. You have to understand men who shared a visceral love for their Alma Mater, Union College. And more importantly, you have to know how Columbia County, New York works. When you understand all of this, a back-room zoning deal is like a game of pick-up sticks by comparison.

On a dark stretch of Route 9H in March of 1972, a woman was killed when she was struck head on by a drunk driver. Her death was instant and violent. Her body was crushed and she was almost decapitated. She had gone out to get a pack of cigarettes and was a mile from her home.

Her name was Nancy Campbell. She and her husband Kenneth owned Lindenwald, the historic home of President Martin Van Buren in Kinderhook, New York, which today is a National Historic Site.

The man who killed her was my father. He was a decorated World War II veteran who had left the University of Michigan to join the Canadian Black Watch as a sniper before the United States had even entered the war. When he came home, he resumed his studies at Union College.

The crime was covered up by two men: Albert Callan Jr., the publisher of the Chatham Courier, and Burns Barford, a power broker in his own right. Together, they orchestrated an elaborate effort to ensure my father was never prosecuted and that the victim’s widower was quietly compensated, ultimately through the sale of Lindenwald to the National Park Service.

Burns Barford, a family friend, came from a very prominent Columbia County family. His father, Burns F. Barford Sr., had been the Columbia County District Attorney and later served as assistant attorney general of the State of New York. His grandfather, James Purcell, had been an elected county clerk of Columbia County. Burns himself was a lifetime resident of Valatie who attended Union College, graduating in 1937, and then Albany Law School, where he graduated cum laude in 1940. Like Albert, Burns was a veteran. He served in the China Burma India Theater for two years, holding every rank from private to major. After the war, he set up a law practice in the Village of Valatie. In 1955, he was appointed Surrogate Court Judge of Columbia County, though he was no longer on the bench at the time my father killed Nancy Campbell. He also served as a director and chairman of the board of the National Union Bank of Kinderhook and for many years as attorney to municipalities across the county. He was a man who knew everyone and wielded quiet but considerable influence.

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Albert Callan Jr. was one of the true princes of Columbia County, a man whose life read like the résumé of three or four different men. His father, Albert S. Callan Sr., had purchased the Chatham Courier back in 1912 and built it into an influential regional weekly. When the elder Callan died in 1963, Albert Jr. assumed the role of publisher, but he had been running the paper as editor for years.

Before the war, Albert had studied French and German at Union College in Schenectady, graduating with the Class of 1941. He enlisted in the U.S. Army just before Pearl Harbor and was assigned to military intelligence, eventually serving on the staff of General George S. Patton. In late 1944, operating alone as an intelligence officer, he was sent on a spy mission into the small village of La Croix Sur Meuse to determine the extent of the German military presence there. He identified several tanks and called in American soldiers to liberate the town. Years after Albert’s death, a plaque was unveiled in La Croix celebrating him as its “Liberator.”

When Albert came home and took over the Courier, he didn’t settle into the quiet rhythms of small-town journalism. Just a few miles south of Chatham, the city of Hudson harbored one of the most brazen vice operations in the northeastern United States. Hudson’s Diamond Street had been the center of a world of prostitution, gambling, and government corruption, all operating under the protection of local law enforcement and elected officials. Through his reporting, Albert helped expose it, and his work contributed to a dramatic reckoning: in 1950, Governor Thomas E. Dewey ordered a surprise raid on Hudson by New York State Troopers. The arrests netted not only the operators of the brothels and gambling parlors but also the mayor and the chief of police. For this work, Albert was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, an extraordinary distinction for the editor of a small-town weekly.

Albert also wrote a weekly column called “The Man in the Black Hat” that ran in the Courier from 1946 until shortly before his death in 2005, a span of nearly sixty years. Though the column was officially unsigned, its authorship was, as one account noted, the worst-kept secret in Chatham and surrounding towns. According to his Union College classmate Larry Schwartz, Albert was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-living columnist in history.

All three men had served in the war. All three had attended Union. That was the bond, and they remained very close friends until my father died in 1976.

Between Albert’s control of the press and Burns’s legal connections, they had the means to make the whole thing disappear. And they did.

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Before Lindenwald became a monument to American democracy, it belonged to Nancy and Kenneth Campbell, a couple who had cashed out of car dealerships in Putnam County and bought the place with visions of grandeur. The Campbells didn’t appreciate what they had. The place looked very different when they owned it, nothing like the Italianate residence we know today. They had tried, and succeeded to some degree, in remaking the historic home into something more suited to their taste. The entire community was horrified. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Nancy commissioned a portico on the front of the house that destroyed the façade, a cosmetic insult that scandalized preservation-minded locals. Their approach to repackaging a historic part of Columbia County did not sit well. 509 Bashford was not the first pillared home to raise eyebrows.

Maybe most notable among those bothered by what the Campbells had done to the property was Albert himself. He had long admired Lindenwald and its place in American history, and the portico was, to him, an affront. But his frustration with the Campbells would eventually intersect with a far darker obligation.

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It was 2010. My brother Seth was having a birthday party for his son Finn at his place in East Chatham. The party was held outside, both young and old. Seth and Susie had set up coolers of beer and soda. There was a barbecue caterer grilling all sorts of food, and Seth was setting up his equipment for his band to start playing.

I went into the house to use the bathroom, and when I came back downstairs, I saw Ginny Callan, Albert’s widow, in the kitchen pouring herself a glass of wine. She looked awful. I went over to her, and she gave me a hug and, in her deep voice, started to chat about how things were going. She said she might go to Mexico this year but wasn’t sure, then asked about me.

Albert was Seth’s godfather and while Ginny was not Seth’s true Godmother, that honor was given to “Cousin Dot.” Yes, before Downton Abbey’s “Cousin Isobel, Dame Maggie Smith’s constant companion and foil, we had “Cousin Dot.” She had lived in Danbury but moved to Montana. As Cousin Dot’s presence faded over the years Ginny took up mantle of Godmother and we went along with it.

Ginny was a formidable woman in her own right. Born Virginia Cairns in Albany in 1936, she had led successful careers in radio, television, politics, and public relations. She had worked for WTRY radio and WAST television, and at WGY-WRGB in Schenectady she produced and appeared in the award-winning children’s show “Ginny’s Game Room.” An early advocate for women’s equal pay, she had been appointed to the women’s unit of the New York State Executive Chamber by Governor Nelson Rockefeller and served on a number of state and national political campaigns. Governor Malcolm Wilson appointed her as the Wilson family spokesperson. Governor Hugh Carey appointed her to direct the I Love New York campaign for the 1980 Winter Olympic Games in Lake Placid. She later opened her own public relations firm, Communications Ink, and served as a founder and president of the Women’s Press Club of New York State. She was also president of the Friends of Olana and sat on the board of directors for Columbia Memorial Hospital in Hudson, the very hospital that would figure into this story.

That day of the party the sun was starting to set, and my brother grabbed me.

“Josh, you’ve got to drive Ginny home. I’ve had a couple, I can’t. There’s no way she can drive home.”

I looked across the patio, and it was clear she was buzzed. It was as if Seth and I had cast a magic spell because all at once she got up and came over.

“This was a fabulous party, Seth, but it’s time I head home,” she said in her husky voice.

“Why don’t you let Josh drive you home,” Seth suggested.

“Yeah, Ginny, let me take you home,” I repeated.

“Don’t be silly, I can easily drive myself home,” she insisted and walked into the kitchen.

“Go get her,” Seth told me, and I followed her into the house.

“Ginny, please let me take you home,” I said, almost begging.

“Oh, don’t be silly, I’m fine. I wanted to talk to you anyway.” She hooked her arm in mine and led me out the front door. I helped her down the steps, and once we were on solid ground, she leaned on me less.

“Do you remember when you came over for lunch a few years ago?” She stopped and looked straight at me.

“Of course,” I said, remembering when I had approached Albert to tell me more about my father for a book I was planning to write about him*.

“Well,” she said dramatically, “Albert and I had some words about it. We both know what you wanted to know, but you have to understand that Albert didn’t want to get caught up in it. Certainly not after all these years and at his age.” She said it as if I understood.

I said nothing.

“He never regretted helping your father, never. But God forbid what they did ever got out! Can you imagine?” I had no idea what she was talking about. I had gone to them about another matter concerning my father.

We were at the car by now, and she was digging in her pocketbook for her keys.

“Please, Ginny, let me drive you home,” I begged.

“Don’t be silly, I’ve driven home with a few more in me than this,” she said, acknowledging her drinking.

“I want you to know that it was not murder. Yes, that woman died, but it was an accident, and your father felt awful. If you still want to talk about it, I’ll tell you the whole story. Albert’s dead now,” she said wistfully. “Besides, I think you should know the real story, but I understand if you don’t want to dredge it up.”

She turned the key and the engine came to life. She put the car in drive and took off down the road toward New Concord. Like all of the drinkers in Old Chatham, they knew the paths to take to avoid the Troopers; the local sheriff would look the other way. It was always that way.

I stood in the road and watched her taillights fade into the distance as her words started to sink in. Another death? I decided I would call her. Maybe she was just drunk and delusional, or maybe she was drunk and telling the truth.

I called her a week later. She answered on the first ring, her voice lilting with an almost musical quality.

“Hello,” she sang into the phone.

“Hi Ginny, it’s Josh. I wanted to follow up on our conversation at Seth’s the other night.” A hint of uncertainty crept into my voice. I wasn’t entirely sure she’d remember.

A pregnant pause hung between us before she spoke. “Why don’t you come down for lunch this weekend,” she said decisively. “I’ll tell you everything I know. How does Saturday around 1 sound?”

“Sounds good. See you then.”

“Bye bye,” she chirped, and the line went dead.

When Saturday arrived, I prepared carefully. I showered, shaved, and dressed with unexpected deliberation, a pressed shirt over clean jeans. Something about Ginny’s invitation felt weighted with significance. Not that she was cold or formal. It was only a few years before she flagged me down at the annual “tag sale” fundraiser for the Shaker Museum where she was volunteering. She took a few items that someone had donated for sale, put them in a bag before I could see them and asked me for ten dollars and winked at me. She was fun like this when we were kids. She knew all sorts of tricks. But this was no gag. On the ride home with my friend Peg she opened the bag. There was a small caviar dish with a small spoon from Cartier and a three-piece Christofle silver set – salt, pepper, and mustard pot.

She and Albert had sold their house in Malden Bridge and had moved to Kinderhook Lake, where they had downsized. They spent their winters in Mexico after Albert sold the Currier. Their little house, meticulously rehabbed, sat at the end of a secluded road. From the driveway, you’d never know a home nestled here; it was as if the house had been carefully tucked into the landscape, its only view was the lake. It didn’t look like the Kinderhook lake I knew as a child and was forbidden to swim in because it was so polluted. Of course it would be lovely.

Ginny opened the door before my knuckles could touch the wood, greeting me with a kiss on the cheek. Like all of “grown ups” now, time had reshaped her. Once tall and commanding, she was now slightly stooped, her frame diminishing. Her face had softened, grown puffy, betraying the quiet toll of her drinking. It seemed as if she had aged in just a fews after Seth’s party.

The table was set for a proper lunch. If you knew Albert and Ginny, well, you’d know that they had the kind of taste that would humble Martha Stewart.

“This place is beautiful,” I said, taking in the view.

“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” she asked.

“No, this is my first time.”

A mischievous glint sparked in her eyes. “Well, let’s not make it your last,” she called from the kitchen. “Why don’t you do the honors and open the wine?”

A sterling Tiffany’s corkscrew lay on the table, a relic from another time. I remembered asking about its origin decades ago, and Ginny’s patient explanation about the famous New York City store.

She emerged with a tray bearing two steaming soup bowls and a large salad, shaking a bit as she approached the table, a sign of her need for a drink.

“Let me help,” I offered.

“Absolutely not,” she declared. “You’re the guest of honor.”

I poured our wine, and we settled into our chairs with a shared ritual of anticipation.

“Cheers!” she proclaimed, and we sipped in unison.

Her gaze drifted to the lake, softening with nostalgia. “I miss Albert,” she murmured, “especially when I see people like you, those who remember our old days.”

“It must be hard,” I responded, sensing the weight of her loss.

“Well, one must carry on!” The familiar dramatic flair underscored her words, a performance of resilience.

Then, abruptly, she shifted. “So, you came to ask about the accident. Albert was shocked when you started inquiring about your father’s past. We both understood, but he was blindsided. He thought they’d all been so... discreet.” She paused, watching the lake’s subtle movements. “Everyone felt bad for Nancy Campbell.”

Confusion swept through me. “Who is Nancy Campbell?” The question escaped me, genuine bewilderment coloring my voice.

Ginny reached for the wine bottle, filling her glass nearly to the brim, a telling gesture.

“This is awkward, isn’t it?” she said dryly.

“Is it?”

A sardonic smile played across her lips. “Well, it has the potential to become quite awkward.” She took a slug of wine. “You don’t know what happened in Ghent, do you?”

“I don’t think I do.”

She leaned forward, elbow on the table, glass in hand. “Well,” she said, her tone dry. She refilled my glass. “You might need this.”

“Ginny, I’m a grown man,” I reminded her.

“Yes, you are,” she agreed, pushing the glass on the table towards me.

“Well, where to start,” she said, her mind in a quandary. “You’ve heard of Lindenwald?”

I have her a look. Does anyone not know who grew up there?

“Hmmm... well, before it was a national park it was owned by a couple. The Campbells.”

Ginny told me everything. She told me how Dad had been driving home from the train station in Hudson that night. He’d been in New York and had a few drinks on the train, then stopped at a liquor store in Hudson on his way home. He was drinking as he drove up Route 9H. It took hours to get her lifeless body out of the car.

Dad had broken his femur, ankle, and some ribs. He was not unconscious. When the police removed him from the car, he smelled of alcohol and was slurring his words. He refused to take a breathalyzer and was immediately charged with driving while intoxicated.

It was Albert who called Burns, Ginny told me. Together, they made sure that Dad’s car would not be impounded but stayed on the side of the road so that Bill Clerk, one of “the Bills” — a gay couple who were very close family friends and lived across the road from where Jim and Lucinda Buckley live now in Malden Bridge — could retrieve the liquor bottle from the car. This part I know to be true because in all the chaos, with Mom having to get to the hospital, the Bills had come to the house to watch us until my grandmother could get to us. Bill Clerk took my sister and me with him. I remember it. I remember seeing the car and the red paper poppy the church handed out tied to the rear-view mirror. But the gravity of the situation, that was something you don’t tell a seven-year-old. What I was told was that Dad was injured after hitting a deer on the road.

“Why did the police leave evidence in Dad’s car?” I asked Ginny.

Ginny just looked at me and raised her eyebrows calling me out of my naïvety. After all, I was not a young man and had already learned so much about my family and the power of influence and how to cover-ups certain uncomfortable truths.

The district attorney at the time was Roger J. Miner. Miner was ambitious and the son of yet another Columbia County’s power brokers. He would later become a Federal Court of Appeals senior judge and was on the short list for George H. W. Bush’s consideration as a member of the United States Supreme Court. He was a longtime Republican, as was his father. He knew Albert well, as did his father. Albert was a leading figure in upstate Republican politics, having served as a committeeman of both the Columbia County and National Republican Committees.

“Roger had a lot of ambition,” Ginny continued. “He achieved a lot. Wanted a lot more. He was not onboard with what Albert and Burns were pitching. Can you imagine the fallout of letting a man with your father’s past go free?”

That was why Dad stayed in the hospital as long as he did and was not transferred to Albany Medical Center for his surgery days after the accident. Columbia Memorial Hospital was a safe harbor. Albany Medical Center was not. Ginny knew this firsthand. She would eventually sit on the board of directors for Columbia Memorial.

“The fear that Roger had was twofold,” Ginny went on. “While Albert made sure that the story was not covered in the Courier, of course that was easy since he owned it, he also made sure that the Times Union and Knickerbocker didn’t run any story on it. But the Register Star... they were a pain in the arse. They ran a small blurb about it but were convinced not to cover it further.”

The irony was thick enough to choke on. Here was Albert Callan, the man who had made his journalistic bones exposing political corruption in the county, who had been nominated for a Pulitzer for his fearless reporting on the vice operations in Hudson, whose work had helped bring down a mayor and a chief of police, now using the very same influence and connections to bury a story. The man who had shone a light on Diamond Street was casting a shadow over Route 9H.

“How were they convinced?” I asked. It all seemed too fantastic to be true.

“Fighting the powers that be could have its consequences, I suppose.” Ginny got up and went back into the kitchen. I heard the refrigerator door open, and she returned with another bottle of wine and handed it to me to uncork. I filled her glass and poured a half glass for myself.

“The other consideration was Ken Campbell. If he were to raise a stink, who knew where things would go. Roger needed assurances,” she said, raising her glass and eyebrows at the same time.

She continued. “A couple of things were happening at that time. One was that Albert, myself, and a few others had made Olana a historic site and museum.”

“I remember that,” I said. “I remember going there with Dad and Albert letting us go anywhere.”

Ginny smiled. This was the time when she and Albert had started dating and became “Albert and Ginny.”

“Olana set a template of sorts for the acquisition of historic homes and turning them into museums and parks. For years, people had wanted to do the same with Lindenwald, but the Campbells wouldn’t sell. They had some money after selling their car dealerships, but then they caused a small scandal when Nancy had that portico built. It totally ruined the look of the place,” Ginny said, sounding almost like she was sneering. “In any event, they had no idea how much it would cost them and they started to run out of money.”

She excused herself and went to the powder room. I got up, stretched my legs, and looked around at the beautiful things they had collected. My mind was swimming with questions, but Ginny told a story in her own time, and I knew most of them would be answered if I was patient.

She came back and topped off her wine. When she went to give me more, I said I had to drive and had better not. She gave an eye roll as if to say I was a party pooper.

“Where was I?”

“You were telling me the Campbells were running out of money. How did you know that?”

“There were signs. He started an antiques shop in one of the outbuildings, but what he really sold was junk. She took a state job. And of course Burns knew because they asked the (Kinderhood) Bank for a loan. Burns was the Director of the Bank. There was some leverage.”

I rocked back in my chair. The idea that these men would go to such lengths for my father and had the confidence to do so was mind-blowing.

“After Olana, Albert knew how to pull off making a historic home into a park. Honestly, he had wanted to take over Lindenwald ever since the portico was built.” Ginny stopped to take a breath and eat a bit of her salad.

What Ginny was saying sounds far fetched, but there’s documentation.

The historian Suzanne Julin, writing years later in her administrative history of the park for the National Park Service, would identify Albert as the single most important figure in the preservation effort. Julin noted that while Edward Welles III had organized much of the formal preservation push, Welles was a polarizing figure. But Julin was clear about who mattered most: Albert Callan Jr. had followed in his father’s footsteps as an influential citizen vitally interested in county history, and he strongly supported the preservation of Lindenwald through news stories, editorials, and personal efforts. He would go on to become the founding chairman of the Friends of Lindenwald in 1984 and later mount a successful editorial campaign against a proposed landfill near the historic site. What Julin could not have known, or at least never put into print, was that Albert’s passion for Lindenwald was entangled with a darker thread.

“Ken needed money, and the park offered him five times what he paid for Lindenwald. They also allowed him to stay on the property for life in the gatehouse!” Ginny exclaimed. “He was supposed to pay rent, but that was rubbed out. The park only asked him to pay his light bill in the shop.”

The details, as I would later learn from Julin’s publication, were even more specific. The purchase agreement for the 12.86-acre estate was for a total price of $102,000. To put that in perspective, if invested in the S&P 500 back then, it would be worth around $34 million today. Campbell, who was seventy-eight, was allowed to continue living in the house for three years with an option for a fourth year. The National Park Service finalized its purchase from the National Park Foundation on August 20, 1975.

“God,” I said, taking another sip of wine.

“Oh, it was something to pull off. And Albert and Burns made sure Ken was always taken care of.”

“How so?”

“In every way. It got to the point where the maintenance staff were asked to check on him when he got older. They also checked in with him on any changes that were going to be made, so he was not shocked or upset too much. It was over the top.”

Over the top was an understatement. What had been intended as a temporary humanitarian arrangement became a years-long administrative headache. Warren Hill, who oversaw the early management of the site from his post at the Franklin D. Roosevelt and Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Sites in Hyde Park, cautioned his staff in no uncertain terms: paramount in all responsibilities was assuring a continuing good relationship with Mr. Kenneth Campbell. Staff were to review with him each day the work they expected to accomplish so that he was fully knowledgeable and was not surprised by anything done in and around the estate.

Campbell’s original three-year lease was extended repeatedly, first by a year, then by a fifteen-day emergency extension, and then through a series of special-use permits after he moved into the South Gatehouse. An “accessory use” if you will. A tasting room without the crowd.

Superintendent Bruce Stewart justified the extensions by citing Campbell’s advanced age, fragile state of emotional and physical health, and lack of close relatives. Meanwhile, Campbell’s presence created practical problems beyond mere administrative inconvenience. He had shut off all but four rooms to renovations, he had installed extension cords throughout the building, and when staff inspected, they found the cords had worn through in many areas in the basement, with several 110-volt lines hanging from ceilings.

“Wow” was all I could manage to get out.

“It really worked out for everyone. Ken was taken care of for life and had a nice nest egg. Albert and Burns were thrilled to have Lindenwald turned into a historic site. And your father stayed out of prison.”

I sat for a moment and looked at Ginny with a certain awe and horror. How transactional they made Nancy Campbell’s death. How they orchestrated the freedom of my father. How federal money was used to pay off Ken Campbell.

“Ginny, I don’t get it. Why did Albert and Burns do this for Dad?”

“They were all in the war. They all went to Union. You might not agree with it, but that is what friends did for each other. Besides, how would your father going to prison of helped?” She asked. She was not looking for an answer.

After coffee, I said I had to go.

“Well, I guess that was a lunch you didn’t expect,” Ginny laughed in her husky way.

“No, it was not,” I said, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

Driving home, I felt like I was floating. It seemed almost impossible that my father had killed a person and faced a homicide charge right under my nose, while I was alive, while I was a child in his house. But I knew it was true. It cleared up so many oddities that had made no sense.

When my friend Ellenor Cox (Pete and Lisa’s daughter who grew up on Shaker Muesum Road) had once claimed to remember Dad being involved in the death of someone, it was not a false memory. In March of 1972, the accident that Dad supposedly had because he almost hit a deer was a lie. He had hit a woman. The reason we went with Bill early that morning to the scene of the crash was not to get things out of Dad’s car. It was to collect bottles of liquor. Known evidence.

I eventually found the small article in the Register Star. Dad did, in fact, kill Mrs. Campbell. He was charged and never prosecuted. I also found the publication commissioned by the National Park Service, Suzanne Julin’s administrative history of Lindenwald, which confirmed everything Ginny had told me. Campbell’s health began deteriorating rapidly in 1979, and he was hospitalized repeatedly over the next year, but he did not want to move away from the gatehouse. Despite concerns about his well-being, the special-use permit was extended one final time. Late in 1980, his relatives were appealed to about the elderly man’s living situation. By the end of the year, Campbell had been relocated to a nursing home. Kenneth Campbell died on January 2, 1981. Even in death, his presence lingered. His personal possessions and the antiques from his business filled both the South Gatehouse and the shed he had built on the property until May 1981, when they were finally removed and the shed demolished. What the official record called compassion, I now understood as something more complicated: a debt being honored, a silence being purchased, a deal being kept. And of course, corruption.

It was not long after I had lunch with Ginny that Mom called me.

“Ginny died,” she said flatly into the phone. So many of Mom’s friends were dying or dead. “They found her on the floor. She’d been there for a few days. I can’t imagine.”

Virginia Cairns Callan died on November 28, 2008, at the age of seventy-two, at her residence in Niverville, New York. She had been Albert’s wife for thirty-five years.

Albert himself had died on December 2, 2005, at the age of eighty-seven. He is buried at Spencertown Cemetery in Columbia County. The plaque in La Croix Sur Meuse calls him a liberator. The Guinness Book of World Records called him the longest-living columnist. The National Park Service historian who studied Lindenwald called him the most important figure in saving a president’s home. A Pulitzer nomination recognized his courage in exposing corruption. For nearly sixty years, every week, the people of Chatham and Columbia County opened their newspaper and found a familiar voice waiting for them, wry, warm, principled, and unfailingly present. The man in the black hat never really took it off. But there was a story he never told, a column he never wrote.

With Ginny’s death, one of the last living witnesses to the fix went silent. The other person who knew was my mother. She never discussed it. The deal—war buddies protecting one of their own, a woman’s death turned into a real estate transaction, federal money buying a widower’s silence, a historic landmark born from the ashes of a cover-up—would have died with her, had Ginny not sat down with me that afternoon at Kinderhook Lake and, over soup and too much wine, told me everything.

This story, some might say, is too old to be relevant. It’s not. I have newer arrows in my quiver about Columbia County and how things can get fixed. I’m not going there now; it’s not necessary.

While this may read like a tale of priviledged men, it’s more a story of a community that has a strong tolerance for backroom deals. That’s culture. One that remains long past a voting cycle or the deaths of some individuals.

All hail Columbia County, its remarkable character, history and, yes, its corruption.

And that brings us back to 509 Bashford Road. Should one man get to change the face of a community? Should a town supervisor be able to no-show a vital decision-making meeting representing the very constituents he represents? Should his relationship be disclosed?

The real question is whether this story is just history or is it a reveal of Columbia County’s political DNA?

History lesson over.

Next week: what does research at Cornell Cooperative Extension really show about commercial vineyards in New York? Spoiler alert: not what Dr. Williams claimed in his December email to me. And following this, why would the County Board of Supervisors recommend no environmental study? Not for nothing, by law, this change in zoning triggered the SEQR. But the law as this story tells is rather flexible in New York’s upper Hudson Valley.

One more thing, 509 Bashford Road is on DEC wetlands. This link is from Chatham’s own work product which is public.

As promised here are links to the two email updates I sent out after last week’s article.

• A Dog Under the Pool Cover, a Missing Fence, and a Very Quiet Donal Collins

• Yesterday was “Friday the 13th” — I don’t know, for me, it felt damn lucky.

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All the information in this article was done in preperation for a book about my father. This is a modified version of two completed chapters.

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While the issues around what I have called “The Wine Wars” seem local, they are anything but. This is not NIMBYism. This is a story about whether one couple with enough money and gobs of persistence can fundamentally alter the character of a historic community, and whether the regulatory system will let them dress up a commercial entertainment venture in the borrowed clothes of agriculture to do it. It is happening in New York’s scenic Hudson Valley, and if it can happen here, it can happen anywhere. And it is.

There are many issues, but today I want to talk about four of them: the legitimacy of Ed and Cheri Williams' claim to be farmers and what that means for the tax base and property values; public safety; the pattern of behavior that reveals what this project has always been about; and the product they propose to market.

Dr. Edwin Williams is a facial plastic surgeon. Not a part-time surgeon. A full-time, board-certified, dual-specialty surgeon who operates the Williams Center, a 22,000-square-foot facility in Latham, New York, with multiple surgeons, 75 staff, a surgical center, a hair center, and a med spa. He holds offices in Manhattan, Saratoga, and the Virgin Islands. He served as President of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. He has been an active member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization for over a decade. He has co-written chapters in textbooks and in industry journals. He presents at national and international conferences.

And he is, by his own trademarked designation, The White Coat Entrepreneur™.

His website, DrEdwinWilliams.com, makes no mention of farming. It offers “valuable business education and guidance for Physicians & Med Spas to learn how to scale up their practices.” His book, also called The White Coat Entrepreneur, is subtitled “Master Business So You Can Work Less, Earn More, and Exit Successfully While Maintaining a Balanced Life.” Its Amazon description reads: “FROM SURGEON TO CEO: Earning a degree in medicine doesn’t prepare you to take on the world of entrepreneurship.” His podcast, also branded The White Coat Entrepreneur, features interviews with other surgeons about growing aesthetic practices, opening profit centers, and acquisition strategies. And the book (self-published*), like the vineyard, is a vanity project. And not for nothing, White Coat should be hyphenated because it is a compound modifier, two words that work together to modify a noun: White-Coat Entrepreneur. I say this not to be catty, but to point out that expertise in one area is not necessarily transferable. A good surgeon does not necessarily make a good editor, or a good farmer.

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Let me be clear about what is not on this résumé: a single day of agricultural training. Not one season of commercial crop management. Not one year of livestock husbandry as a principal operator. Not one agricultural certification, not one USDA interaction, not one crop yield report filed with any agency.

Yes, Dr. Williams attended Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences as an undergraduate. He has cited this in communications with me as evidence of agricultural credentials. But as his own podcast reveals, he studied physiology and chemistry, not farming, not viticulture, not agronomy. He went on to medical school, did a residency in otolaryngology and a fellowship in facial plastics. The Cornell agricultural college was a waypoint on the road to the operating room, not the vineyard.

Yes, he has said he “worked on a dairy farm for over ten years through college and medical school.” Working on a farm is not the same as being a farmer. Millions of Americans held farm jobs in their youth. It does not make them qualified to operate commercial agricultural enterprises any more than working at a law firm filing paperwork makes one a lawyer.

The cattle on the property adjacent to Fox Hill Estate? They belong to Donal Collins, a farmer who leases the land and just happens to be Chatham’s Town Supervisor. I asked the town if Mr. Collins has recused himself from any decision making on the issues before the town or disclosed the nature of the business relationship he shares with Williams. While I got a response to the email (and for that matter every email I have sent), what I did not get was an answer to that question. This led me to FOIL the town. (You can read the FOIL request here as well as the one sent to Columbia County.) Why does this matter? Simple. The process with the town has been strange. You can read about that here (The Wine Wars: Is Fox Hill the Hill To Die On).

The Fox Hill Vineyard property itself, 509 Bashford Road, is classified as residential or RL-2. Its full market value is $4,573,171. It is not, and has never been, classified as a farm. Never. Why? Because it is not a farming operation, not by any interpretation of the law. Four hundred grapevines producing approximately 150 bottles of wine per year. That is roughly twelve cases. A dedicated wine enthusiast could consume that quantity in a year without particular effort.

So when the application arrived at the county level this past January requesting that this property be included in Agricultural District #10, granting it state-level protections designed for working farms whose operators depend on the land for their livelihood, one has to ask: for whom was this statute written? Was it written for The White Coat Entrepreneur™, the serial entrepreneur who built a multi-million dollar medical practice and trademarked his own brand name? Or was it written for the actual farmers of Columbia County, the people who get up before dawn, who don’t have surgical centers and med spas and Manhattan offices, who depend on the land not as a side hustle but as a life?

If this property receives agricultural district designation, the Williams would be eligible for agricultural tax assessment under Section 305, taxing the land at its agricultural value rather than its fair market value. Consider what that means: a $4.5 million estate, currently paying taxes commensurate with that valuation, could see its assessment reduced to a fraction of that amount. The revenue lost to the Town of Chatham, to the school district, to the county, that revenue would need to be made up somewhere. By whom, you ask? Everybody but the Williamses.

And then there is the burden on first responders. On March 18, 2013, a fire broke out at 509 Bashford Road, the Williams’ previous home on the property. It was a horrible fire that claimed the lives of pets and property. An absolute tragedy. How did it start? A housekeeper cleaning out the fireplace from the night before left embers on the porch. Luckily no person was physically harmed. The children were at school and the Williamses were working at their full-time jobs at the surgery center and medical spa.

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The volunteer fire department responded and tried to extinguish the blaze to no avail. Even with a large pond on the property, built by Bill Spencer over fifty years ago and part of the New York State designated wetlands, the volunteer firefighters were unable to marshal enough water to save the original Williams home. The uphill grade made it impossible to get enough water to the fire.

Now consider what a commercial operation would mean for those same volunteer responders. More traffic on narrow dirt roads. More visitors unfamiliar with the area. More vehicles, more people, more risk, on a road where the fire department already could not save a house. If the existing public-safety infrastructure was insufficient to protect a single residential structure, what happens when dozens of patrons are added to the equation on a regular basis?

And it is not just taxes. It is property values, everyone else’s property values. The weight of evidence from communities across the country is clear: commercial event activities adjacent to residential properties in rural settings, including weddings, concerts, and tasting rooms with significant foot traffic, create noise, traffic, parking, light pollution, and safety concerns that suppress neighboring property values. While there’s no exact percentage on the cost of living next to a winery/wedding venue, research on noise and traffic externalities consistently shows impacts ranging from five to eighteen percent, depending on intensity and proximity.

The anecdotal evidence from zoning battles nationwide is remarkably consistent. In Franklin County, Missouri, when a wedding venue was proposed, an appraiser for the venue owner claimed no impact on neighboring property values. Three members of the neighboring Kerr family presented appraisals showing they could lose more than $100,000 in property value if the venue was built. In Dripping Springs, Texas, homeowners fought a legal battle with a wedding venue that hosted weddings with loud music approximately 250 feet from a neighbor’s back porch. One neighbor stated: “I can’t use my property… I’m hostage on my own land.” A neighborhood coalition explicitly listed reduced property values among the documented impacts and urged neighbors to get baseline appraisals before the construction of the proposed venue.

One resident near an existing venue testified: “We live in a residential area where several years after we moved here a wedding venue was quietly built right next to our property… Once they were established, it became obvious there was very little concern for the residents. Their focus was to grow the business. Now, delivery and trash trucks are frequent, buses park near our property… Noise levels are no longer monitored… Most importantly, residential property values fell. No one wants to live next to or near a wedding/event venue!”

The residents of Bashford Road should not have to wait until the damage is done to learn what their homes are worth. If this project goes forward, the question is not whether property values will be affected. It is by how much.

This is not a farming venture. This is tax strategy dressed in Gucci overalls.

The Product: A Known Carcinogen

Let us talk about what Dr. Williams proposes to sell.

Wine has no meaningful nutritional value. None. Real crops do. A five-ounce glass contains 120 to 140 calories, virtually all of them from alcohol and trace sugar. Zero fiber. Negligible protein. No significant vitamins or minerals. The antioxidants that wine enthusiasts love to cite, resveratrol chief among them, are present in quantities so small that a person would need to consume dangerous volumes of wine to achieve any therapeutic effect. The U.S. government does not classify alcoholic beverages as nutritious. Wine bottles are not required to carry Nutrition Facts labels. The product is regulated not by the FDA but by the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

What wine does contain, in meaningful quantity, is ethanol. And ethanol is a Group 1 carcinogen.

This is not my opinion. This is the determination of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a body of the World Health Organization, which first classified alcohol as a Group 1 carcinogen in 1988. Group 1 is the highest classification, the same category as tobacco, asbestos, and ionizing radiation. The U.S. National Toxicology Program has listed alcoholic beverages as a “known human carcinogen” since 2000. The World Health Organization states there is “no safe level of alcohol consumption” when it comes to cancer risk.

In January 2025, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy issued a formal advisory calling for cancer warning labels on all alcoholic beverages, calling alcohol the third leading preventable cause of cancer in the United States. Approximately 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths per year in this country are attributable to alcohol. Alcohol causes more deaths annually than drunk driving crashes.

And here is where the story acquires its particular irony.

Alcohol is directly linked to cancers of the oral cavity, the pharynx, and the larynx. These are head and neck cancers. The cancers of the mouth, throat, and voice box. The precise anatomical territory that otolaryngologists, ear, nose, and throat specialists, are trained to diagnose and treat.

Dr. Edwin Williams is board-certified in Otolaryngology. He is trained to treat the cancers that the product he proposes to sell is known to cause.

A meta-analysis of 20 case-control studies found that alcohol consumption has a strong direct relationship with laryngeal cancer risk. How strong? Eighty percent of oral and pharyngeal cancer cases in men are attributable to alcohol and tobacco use. The National Cancer Institute confirms that even light drinking, one drink per day, increases cancer risk.

I have no quarrel with people who choose to drink. Adults make their own decisions. But there is something that should give pause about a physician, specifically a physician trained in the specialty that treats the cancers alcohol causes, seeking to build a commercial enterprise around selling that carcinogen from a garage in a residential neighborhood, on a road with no sidewalks, to patrons who will then drive home on dirt roads through horse country.

Less than 45 percent of Americans are aware that alcohol causes cancer. Eighty-nine percent know tobacco causes cancer. This awareness gap is not accidental; it is the product of decades of industry marketing that has successfully positioned wine as a wholesome, even healthful, product. The Surgeon General’s advisory was issued precisely to close that gap.

Dr. Williams knows the science. He has to. It is his field. And yet here we are.

What This Has Always Been About

Let’s review the record. Not the aspirational language of the applications. Not the attorney’s letters. The actual pattern of behavior.

Around 2019, the Williamses advertised their property as a wedding venue. Events for 100 to 150 guests. Parties continuing to the early morning hours. The neighbors vigorously objected. They backed off and then reapproached, this time as farmers.

Then they plant 400 grapevines and rebrand the same project as a vineyard with a tasting room. Same garage. Same neighbors. Same zoning code that does not permit commercial retail in residential districts. They represent to the town that the wine is made off-site. Then, at a January 2026 hearing, when licensing law makes on-site production more legally advantageous, the story suddenly changes: the wine has apparently been made in the garage all along. Odd to say the least.

Their filing with the town suggests a vineyard at 800 vines. Williams’ letter to me says 5,000 (you can read it here). Their initial applications propose selling Fox Hill wine. Their attorney’s latest salvo acknowledges the tasting room would sell other commercial brands with no connection to Bashford Road, just as long as it’s made in New York.

When the neighbors asked Dr. Williams what he thought of their concerns, according to three separate sources who asked not to be identified, his response has been consistent: “I don’t give a f*ck what my neighbors think.”

Meanwhile, in October 2025, quietly and without public announcement, an application was filed to include 509 Bashford Road in Columbia County Agricultural District #10. A public hearing was held on January 5, 2026. The residents of Bashford Road and the surrounding area, who have been attending meeting after meeting, writing letter after letter, one of whom hired a lawyer, another of whom conducted a theoretical risk analysis, mostly didn’t even know it was happening. It’s hard to know. Columbia County puts notices in the Register-Star and its paywalled online e-edition, not the Times Union, the only true daily newspaper in the area, with delivery and a more robust circulation in the northern part of Columbia County, where the Town of Chatham is located.

This is what the entire saga has always been about. Not farming. Not viticulture. Not preserving agricultural land. It is about hosting events on a hilltop property in horse country and finding the legal vehicle to make it happen: wedding venue, vineyard, tasting room, agricultural district designation and tax dodge. The vehicle changes. The destination does not.

The Burning Question

Dr. Edwin Williams is a dual board-certified surgeon. He is The White Coat Entrepreneur™. He runs a multimillion dollar medical practice with 75 staff across multiple locations. He is an author, a podcaster, a business mentor, a conference speaker, a member of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. He owns a surgical center. He owns the trademark on his personal brand.

He is not a farmer. The property is not a farm.

He produces (or claims to) twelve cases of wine per year from a property assessed at $4.5 million, and he wants the State of New York to classify this as agriculture deserving of the same protections granted to the dairy farmers, the crop growers, and the livestock operators who depend on the land for their survival.

He wants to sell a product classified as a Group 1 carcinogen, a product directly linked to the cancers his own medical specialty is trained to treat, from a garage on a dirt road in a residential neighborhood where not a single person has gone on the public record in support of his proposal.

And he wants a tax break for it.

Can anyone really take at face value that Ed and Cheri Williams are farmers? Do they really deserve the exemption? Or is Fox Hill Estate & Vineyard just another gig for The White Coat Entrepreneur™?

He trademarked the name, after all. You have to give him credit for that. He has always been transparent about what he is. Just not, it seems, about what he wants to do to Bashford Road.

There is now a petition circulating online to stop the project. Interested parties can access that here.

Sign The Petition To Stop The Winery

*Advantage Media Group is a hybrid book publisher founded in 2005 by Adam Witty in Charleston, South Carolina. It specializes in helping CEOs, entrepreneurs, and business leaders publish books through a “done-for-you” model, where authors don’t have to write a single word themselves. The company uses a “Talk Your Book” process to turn interviews into manuscripts. Authors retain creative control and 100% of their book rights.

In short, it’s a vanity press for professionals who want to become “published authors” to build their personal brand and authority.

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Independent journalism answers to readers—not advertisers, corporations, or access-hungry editors. No story gets killed because it upsets a sponsor. No punch gets pulled because someone important made a phone call.

Your support makes possible sharp commentary, fearless satire, and reporting that follows the story wherever it leads. In an era of manufactured narratives and algorithmic blandness, that independence isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity.

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Previous installments in The Wine Wars series:

Part One: The Grapes of Wrath

Part Two: The War of the Rosé

Part Three: Let’s Get Local

Part Four: Fox Hill Vineyard Tasting Room Proposal Faces Legal Hurdles in Chatham

Part Five: Is Fox Hill the Hill to Die On?

Other: Dewey Loeffel & Nassau Lake: When Private Property Becomes A Public Problem

References and Source

1. U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on Alcohol and Cancer Risk (January 3, 2025)

2. International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO)

3. National Cancer Institute, “Alcohol and Cancer Risk Fact Sheet”

4. National Toxicology Program, 15th Report on Carcinogens

5. MD Anderson Cancer Center

6. IARC Handbooks of Cancer Prevention, Volume 20A

7. Columbia County tax records (Image Mate Online)

8. dredwinwilliams.com

9. Amazon/Barnes & Noble (The White Coat Entrepreneur)

10. Apple Podcasts (The White Coat Entrepreneur)

11. Town of Chatham Zoning Law, Chapter 180

12. Columbia County Planning Department correspondence (February 6, 2026)

13. N.Y. Agriculture and Markets Law §§ 303-b, 305-a

14. Rehold property records, 509 Bashford Rd fire incident (March 18, 2013)

15. Washington Missourian (March 2017) — Franklin County, Missouri wedding venue/property value case

16. KVUE/KXAN News, Austin, TX — Dripping Springs, Texas wedding venue dispute

17. Friendship Alliance (friendshipalliance.org) — neighbor testimony compilation, Dripping Springs, TX

©2026 All Rights Reserved The Powell House Press | josh@thepowellhousepress.com

Ed and Cheri Williams still want to open a wine tasting room in their garage. The zoning doesn’t permit it. The licensing requirements aren’t met. The neighbors have objected for years. The application has never been complete. And yet the proposal won’t die—because no one at the Town of Chatham seems willing to kill it.

The Williams own an Architectural Digest-aspirational property in Chatham’s RL-2 district—Rural Land 2, a zoning classification whose stated purpose is “to preserve and protect, for the benefit of the town as a whole, the basically rural-agricultural character of the Town.” What they want is to convert their garage into a wine tasting room for Fox Hill Estate & Vineyard. Four hundred grapevines. Fewer than 160 bottles of annual production. And according to their prior submissions, not a drop of it made on the premises—the wine was produced off-site by a contract manufacturer. Or so the town was told, for years, until the story suddenly changed at a public hearing last week.

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This isn’t the Williams’ first attempt to monetize the pastoral. Years ago, they floated a wedding venue—think Real Housewives meets Bridezilla, as one local put it—complete with Facebook posts and a now-defunct website. The neighbors objected vigorously. The town said no. During that period, the Williams planted their 400 grapevines and put the house on the market. Two years later, the house came off the market and the Williams came back with a fresh pitch: not weddings, but wine. Same garage. Same neighbors. Same zoning code that doesn’t permit commercial retail in residential districts. But hope springs eternal when you can afford lawyers and engineers willing to submit incomplete applications in perpetuity.

The legal deficiencies are not subtle. Wine tasting rooms don’t appear among the permitted or special permit uses for RL-2. Approval would require a use variance—the hardest approval to obtain under New York law. The applicant must prove “unnecessary hardship” by demonstrating that no reasonable return can be realized from any permitted use, that the hardship is unique to the property, that the variance won’t alter the neighborhood’s essential character, and that the hardship wasn’t self-created. The Williams purchased this property as a residence. It was zoned RL-2 when they signed the papers. They were on constructive notice of every applicable restriction. New York courts have held, with admirable consistency, that self-created hardship is fatal to a use variance application. This should have been a short conversation.

But wait, the Williams might say—we’re not asking for a use variance. We’re a farm. Agriculture is permitted. The tasting room is just an accessory use.

Understanding what “accessory use” actually explains why this argument fails. In Chatham—as in municipalities across New York—an accessory use must meet four specific criteria. It must be incidental and subordinate to the principal use. It must be customarily found in connection with that principal use. It must be located on the same lot. And it must serve the owners, occupants, employees, or visitors of the principal use. The distinction matters because accessory uses are regulated differently than principal uses—they typically don’t require the separate permits or approvals that principal uses demand. If something qualifies as accessory, it may be allowed automatically in a zone where it would otherwise be prohibited.

Common examples illustrate the point. A residential garage storing the homeowner’s vehicles is accessory to the residence. A barn storing farm equipment and harvested crops is accessory to farming. A farm stand selling on-site produce (wine is not produce) can be accessory to agriculture. What generally doesn’t qualify: uses generating their own customer traffic independent of the principal use, separate commercial enterprises available to the general public, or uses not customarily associated with the principal use historically. The tests are strict. New York courts have held that an accessory use must be “well established” and “customary”—not merely logical or efficient, but traditionally associated with the principal use. In one case, a court ruled that using a department store roof as a helicopter landing site, though efficient for transporting executives, was not sufficiently “customary” as an accessory to retail business.

For a wine tasting room on a residential property in RL-2, the analysis is straightforward. A tasting room open to the public is not subordinate to residential use—it displaces it. It’s not customarily found on residential properties—it’s found at commercial wineries. It doesn’t serve the occupants of the residence—it exists to attract and serve the public. Even if 400 grapevines constitute a farm operation (they don’t), and even if the Williams qualify for farm winery status (they can’t, per state law), a commercial tasting room serving the general public fails every element of the accessory use test.

The State of New York has clear rules about who gets to operate a tasting room. Under the Alcoholic Beverage Control Law, only licensed wineries and farm wineries may conduct wine tastings. To qualify as a farm winery, you must manufacture at least 50 gallons of wine per year—roughly 250 bottles—at your licensed facility. The State Liquor Authority is unambiguous: “You cannot rely on a contract manufacturer to produce the annual production minimum for you.” The Williams, by their own admission, produce about 150 bottles from their 400 vines. That’s 60 percent below the minimum. The law also requires that farm wineries use at least 75 percent New York State-grown fruit and be located on an actual farm. A residential property with decorative grapevines is not a farm within the meaning of the statute—particularly when, according to years of submissions to the town, the wine wasn’t even being made there.

Then there’s the agricultural district question, which should have been dispositive from the start. The Williams have claimed protections under Agriculture and Markets Law—the state statute that shields legitimate farm operations from local zoning interference. Those protections apply exclusively to properties located within certified agricultural districts. The Williams’ property is not in one. The State Department of Agriculture and Markets confirmed this directly. The Town’s own Building Inspector, Kent Pratt, admitted he was unaware of this fact when he made his initial determination. The entire agricultural defense—the notion that the town’s hands are tied, that farming must be permitted, that a tasting room is merely incidental to a protected agricultural use—evaporates the moment you check the county tax records.

None of which has stopped the application from proceeding.

Last December, when residents raised these legal questions at a Zoning Board of Appeals meeting, Chair Dan Persing scheduled a public hearing. Attorney Mitchell Khosrova, representing neighbor Sue Tanner, objected immediately. This was a matter of law, he told the board—not a matter for public deliberation. A public hearing made no sense. The threshold question was whether the application was legally cognizable in the first instance, and that question had a legal answer that didn’t require community input.

Persing scheduled the hearing anyway. At first blush, this might have seemed reasonable—even admirable. Democracy in action. Let everyone have their say. Except Khosrova was right. This wasn’t a matter suited for democratic deliberation. This was a matter of law. The threshold question before the board was not public sentiment but a question with a legal answer: Can a garage be used as an accessory structure for commercial purposes in an RL-2 district? Does the proposal meet the statutory definition of accessory use? Is a wine tasting room—which requires state licensing, invites the public onto the premises to sell alcohol, and generates commercial traffic—compatible with residential zoning?

These are legal questions. They have legal answers. You find those answers by reading the zoning code, consulting the relevant statutes, and applying established precedent. You do not find them by holding a public hearing and counting hands. A public hearing is appropriate when a board needs to assess community impact, gather testimony about site-specific conditions, or weigh competing interests within its discretion. It is not appropriate when the question is whether the application is legally cognizable in the first instance.

You might forgive a country volunteer board member for not recognizing this distinction. Local zoning boards are staffed by well-meaning citizens, not constitutional scholars. If an untrained volunteer thought a public hearing was the inclusive way to handle a controversial application, you could chalk it up to an abundance of caution. But Dan Persing is not a country volunteer fumbling through unfamiliar territory. Dan Persing is a practicing attorney who serves as counsel to the New York State Department of Health and maintains a private practice at the Herzog Law Firm. He’s also a faculty member at Albany Law School with a solid reputation in tort claims and regulatory law. He is precisely the sort of person who would know that questions of law are not resolved by referendum, that public hearings serve a specific statutory purpose, and that scheduling one to address threshold legal deficiencies is not inclusive democracy—it’s a procedural error that creates the false impression that approval is a live possibility when the law says otherwise.

He knew this. He had to have known this. Khosrova had just told him as much, standing at the lectern in a municipal meeting room in early December. And yet Persing scheduled the hearing anyway. His decision put the cart so far before the horse that the horse was left grazing in another pasture entirely. It forced residents to prepare testimony, retain counsel, and spend their evenings at public meetings arguing about an application that should have been rejected on its face. And it gave the Williams exactly what applicants in these situations always want: more time, more process, more opportunities to wear down the opposition through sheer procedural attrition.

The hearing, when it convened on January 22, did produce one revelation—though not the kind that inspires confidence in the application’s integrity. For the first time, the board and the public learned from the Williams’ engineer that wine is being made in the garage itself. This directly contradicted what the board had been told in all prior submissions: that the wine was made off-site by a contract manufacturer. The timing of this disclosure is revealing. The State Liquor Authority requires that farm wineries manufacture wine at their licensed facility—you cannot rely on a contract manufacturer to meet the annual production minimum. For years, the Williams had described their wine as contract-manufactured. But at the January 22 hearing, facing questions about licensing requirements, the story suddenly changed. Now, apparently, the garage had been serving as a production cellar all along. The explanation for years of unreported wine production in a residential garage—production that neither the neighbors, nor the town, nor apparently the snowblower knew about—has yet to be offered. One wonders where they keep the snowblower. What is clear is that somewhere between the December meeting and the January hearing, a closer look at state licensing law made on-site production significantly more advantageous to the Williams’ case. And so the facts, as presented to the board, adjusted accordingly.

That January 22 hearing concerned a narrow question: whether a garage in a residentially zoned neighborhood may be used as an accessory structure for commercial purposes. Under Chatham’s code, a tasting room open to the public constitutes a commercial retail use. People come, sample products, and purchase. This generates traffic, requires parking, involves on-site consumption of alcohol, and transforms a residential accessory structure into something fundamentally different. The home occupation provisions offer no refuge. Those rules require that such uses be “clearly subordinate in space utilization and intensity” to the residential use, with a “low number of, if any daily client visits.” They prohibit exterior signage and require that traffic not exceed what’s normally expected in the neighborhood. A tasting room exists to attract visitors. That is its entire purpose. It fails every one of these tests.

The board knew in advance that Ed Williams’ attorney, Lawrence Howard, would be unavailable on January 22. They scheduled the hearing anyway. When a zoning board knows that one party’s attorney will be absent, the proper procedure is straightforward: don’t schedule a hearing for that date, or adjourn it to a time when counsel can attend. Proceeding when you know an attorney won’t be available raises due process concerns and creates an appearance of partiality.

At that January 22 hearing, Khosrova asked Persing directly: had there been any ex parte discussion between him and Lawrence Howard? Persing said quickly there had not been. And there’s no reason to doubt him. But what went unmentioned in that exchange is that both Persing and Howard are faculty members at Albany Law School. It’s a connection that doesn’t prove anything—attorneys in the same legal community often know each other, teach at the same institutions, cross paths professionally. But in the context of everything else—the initial public hearing that shouldn’t have been scheduled, the accommodation of Howard’s vacation schedule, the refusal to resolve threshold legal questions—it’s a detail that adds texture to the pattern.

While Williams himself said nothing at the January 22 hearing, and while Howard sunned himself elsewhere, the Williams produced their engineer, who offered legal arguments he wasn’t qualified to make and introduced the claim about on-site wine production that no one had heard before and that contradicted everything previously submitted to the board. Rather than resolve the threshold legal question the hearing was ostensibly called to address, Persing extended it—ostensibly to accommodate Howard’s return and allow for more town feedback. This time for another ten days, ostensibly to allow for additional public comments. But when asked to provide public notice of this second continuation, he refused.

So now we have not just a public hearing that shouldn’t have been held in the first place—a hearing Khosrova objected to in December on the grounds that legal questions don’t require public input—but a hearing being extended, for more public input, on a question of law. More comments. On an application that has generated years of public opposition. On a legal question—whether a garage can serve as an accessory structure for commercial purposes—that does not turn on the volume of public sentiment but on the plain language of the zoning code.

Khosrova raised this in December. The law is clear. The community has spoken. What exactly does Persing expect to learn in ten more days? And why, if he wants more public input, would he refuse to notify the public that the hearing is continuing? It begs the question: why?

The New York Open Meetings Law requires that notice of public meetings be posted conspicuously at least 72 hours in advance and provided to the news media. For public hearings on special use permit applications, Town Law requires publication at least five days before the hearing. When a board continues a hearing to a new date, the statutory notice requirements attach anew. Ten days is ample time to comply. The failure to provide notice is either an oversight or a choice, and neither explanation cures the defect. Persing’s refusal to provide notice when asked suggests it’s the latter.

Under Public Officers Law § 107, any action taken at an improperly noticed meeting is voidable. If the board receives testimony, admits evidence, or conducts deliberations at the next session—the one for which no notice has been given—that action will be subject to challenge. An Article 78 proceeding could result in annulment and remand. The Williams’ application, already legally deficient on multiple independent grounds, will have acquired yet another vulnerability.

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The pattern is hard to ignore. At every juncture where the board might have said no—where the legal deficiencies were clear, where the application was incomplete, where the threshold questions should have been resolved before proceeding—Persing has found a way to keep the process alive. He scheduled a public hearing on a question of law. He held that hearing knowing the applicant’s attorney would be absent. He accepted new factual claims that contradicted years of prior submissions without demanding explanation or documentation. He extended the hearing once. Then he extended it again—to solicit more comments on a question that doesn’t require comments—and refused to provide notice for the next session. Each decision, taken individually, might be explained as procedural caution, deference to process, or simple error. Taken together, they describe something else: a board chair who, for reasons not yet apparent, seems invested in giving this application every possible chance to survive.

The neighbors have done everything right. They’ve attended meetings. They’ve submitted written comments. They’ve raised legal objections, environmental concerns, and procedural deficiencies. They’ve pointed out that the property sits uphill from unmapped wetlands, a stream, and a shared aquifer. That vineyard operations in the humid Northeast require heavy fungicide and pesticide applications—chemicals like mancozeb, imidacloprid, and captan that run off into soil, streams, and groundwater. That the EPA has proposed canceling mancozeb in grapes entirely due to worker safety concerns. That there is no environmental impact study. That the application’s Short Environmental Assessment Form contains inaccuracies. That the town’s consulting engineer cataloged a litany of deficiencies including no responses to Planning Board comments, no responses to neighbor concerns, inadequate site plans, and no proper wetland mapping.

Norm Levine, a concerned citizen, has seen this before. Special use permits in rural communities notoriously lack teeth. Applicants claim they’ll limit events, cap attendance, restrict hours—and then the profitable opportunities arise and the limits evaporate. Who shuts down the seventh event when the permit allows only six? The answer is no one. No one ever shuts down the seventh event. Meanwhile, wine tastings elsewhere have required dedicated police presence on weekends. One Long Island venue, Vineyard 48, shut its doors amid an emergency suspension of its liquor license after it became a focal point of police attention—officers forced to dedicate resources every weekend to monitor a single establishment. Rural communities cannot afford that kind of diversion.

The Williams, when asked about their plans, have offered responses that don’t track with their application. Their filing with the town says they’ll cap the vineyard at 800 vines. Their response to questions for this series said 5,000 vines were in the offing. That’s not a modest expansion—it’s a tenfold increase from current operations, a yield requiring processing facilities far larger than any residential garage. The inconsistency has not been explained. The environmental implications have not been addressed. The neighbors have not been consulted. And yet the application proceeds, meeting after meeting, year after year, deficiency after deficiency—a zombie proposal that refuses to die because no one on the board will drive a stake through it.

Part of the answer is structural. Local government, even in small towns, has a hard time rejecting applications outright. Applicants hire professionals. Engineers submit reports. Lawyers write letters. Forms get filed, however incompletely, and the process acquires momentum. Boards find it easier to ask for more information, to schedule another hearing, to extend the timeline, than to render the obvious verdict. The path of least resistance is continuation, not conclusion.

But structure doesn’t explain everything. Structure doesn’t explain why a board chaired by an experienced attorney—one who teaches at Albany Law School alongside the applicant’s attorney—would schedule a public hearing on a question of law that another attorney told him didn’t require public input. Structure doesn’t explain why that same board chair would hold the hearing knowing one party’s counsel would be absent, then extend it again to gather comments on a question that doesn’t require comments, while refusing to provide notice for the continuation. Structure doesn’t explain the persistent unwillingness to confront the threshold deficiencies that should have ended this matter long ago.

The Williams have no farm winery license. They can’t meet the production minimums. They’re not in an agricultural district. The zoning doesn’t permit commercial retail uses. The application has never been complete. The variance requirements cannot be met. The town’s own law is explicit. So why does this project still breathe?

The question before the Chatham ZBA is not complicated. Can a garage in a residential neighborhood be converted into a commercial wine tasting room? The zoning says no. The licensing law says no. The agricultural district rules offer no protection. The home occupation standards aren’t satisfied. The application has never been complete. The variance requirements cannot be met. These are not close calls. They are not matters of interpretation requiring public input and community deliberation. They are questions of law, and the law has answered them. What remains is for someone in authority to acknowledge as much—to stop treating a legal impossibility as though it were merely a controversial proposal, to stop holding hearings on questions that don’t require hearings, to stop extending deadlines and accommodating attorneys and failing to post notices for meetings that shouldn’t be happening in the first place.

The public hearing continues—not with another meeting, but with a ten-day window during which people can submit written comments to the town. The residents of Bashford Road will keep writing, keep submitting comments, keep raising objections that ought to have been dispositive years ago. They’ll do this because it’s their neighborhood, their aquifer, their dirt roads that will bear the traffic, their property values that will absorb the impact. They’ll do it because participating in local government is what citizens do, even when local government doesn’t seem particularly interested in listening.

And the Williams will keep submitting applications, keep hiring engineers, keep planting grapevines and dreaming of five thousand more. They’ll do this because no one has told them to stop—because persistence, in the face of a board that won’t say no, is its own reward.

The garage question has an answer. It’s had an answer from the beginning. What it doesn’t have is a board willing to give it. Why won’t they kill it?

Other parts of this series:

Part One: The Grapes of Wrath

Part Two: The War of the Rosé

Part Three: Vineyard Tasting Room Proposal Faces Legal Hurdles in Chatham

CHATHAM NY — A public hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, January 22, on Fox Hill Vineyard’s application to operate a wine tasting room on property located in the town’s RL-2 zoning district. The application has drawn opposition from residents who argue the proposal does not comply with New York State farm winery licensing requirements or local zoning law.

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The property in question was purchased as a residential home and is located in the RL-2 (Rural Land 2) zoning district. The property was zoned RL-2 at the time of purchase, meaning the applicants were on constructive notice of all applicable zoning restrictions when they acquired it. After acquiring the property, the applicants planted grapevines with the stated intention of eventually producing wine. However, the applicants have acknowledged that Fox Hill Vineyard does not currently produce grapes in sufficient quantity to manufacture wine at the minimum volumes required for licensure as a farm winery under New York State law. Despite this, the applicants are seeking approval to operate a commercial tasting room serving alcohol to the public.

Under New York law, the authority to conduct wine tastings is granted exclusively to licensed wineries and farm wineries, pursuant to N.Y. Alcoholic Beverage Control Law §§ 76(4) and 76-a(2)(e). Without a valid license, an establishment has no legal authority to conduct tastings or engage in retail alcohol sales. The New York Alcoholic Beverage Control Law establishes several specific requirements that must be satisfied before an establishment may operate as a farm winery.

First, N.Y. Alcoholic Beverage Control Law § 76-a(9)(b) mandates that any person licensed as a farm winery “shall manufacture at least fifty gallons of wine, cider, and mead per year.” This 50-gallon minimum is equivalent to approximately 250 bottles or 21 cases annually. This is not an aspirational goal but a mandatory prerequisite for licensure. According to the New York State Liquor Authority’s official guidance, as stated in the SLA’s Winery Quick Reference: “You cannot rely on a contract manufacturer to produce the annual production minimum for you.” The production must occur at the licensed facility itself. Currently, with 400 vines the Williams produce less than 160 bottles. None of the wine is produced on site.

Second, N.Y. Alcoholic Beverage Control Law § 76-a(5)(a) provides that “no licensed farm winery shall manufacture or sell any wine not produced exclusively from grapes or other fruits or agricultural products grown or produced in New York state.” The SLA interprets this provision to require that farm wineries use at least 75 percent New York State-grown grapes or fruits in their wine production.

Third, the New York State Liquor Authority requires that a farm winery be located on a farm. As the SLA’s Winery Quick Reference states, “A farm winery must be located on a farm.” A residential property with grapevines does not necessarily constitute a “farm” within the meaning of the licensing requirements, particularly where no wine is actually being manufactured.

Because a wine tasting room is not a permitted use in the RL-2 district, approval of the application would require a use variance. New York Town Law § 267-b(2)(b) establishes stringent requirements for the grant of a use variance. The statute provides that “no such use variance shall be granted by a board of appeals without a showing by the applicant that applicable zoning regulations and restrictions have caused unnecessary hardship.”

To prove unnecessary hardship, an applicant must demonstrate all four of the following elements, as set forth in N.Y. Town Law § 267-b(2)(b)(1)-(4). The applicant must show they “cannot realize a reasonable return” from any permitted use, “provided that lack of return is substantial as demonstrated by competent financial evidence.” The subject property has value for its permitted residential use, as well as for agricultural uses including grape cultivation. A preference for a more profitable commercial use does not establish inability to realize a reasonable return. The purpose of a use variance is not to remedy poor business decisions such as paying too much for a piece of property or to enable owners to make more money than they could from permitted uses.

The applicant must also show that the alleged hardship is “unique” to the property and “does not apply to a substantial portion of the district or neighborhood.” Every property owner in the RL-2 district faces the same restriction against commercial retail uses. An applicant cannot establish uniqueness merely by asserting that they wish to pursue a use that is not permitted.

Additionally, the applicant must demonstrate that the requested use variance “will not alter the essential character of the neighborhood.” The RL-2 district is characterized by single-family residences, agricultural uses, and rural tranquility. A commercial tasting room serving alcohol to the public would generate commercial traffic, noise, parking demands, and activity patterns inconsistent with the neighborhood’s residential character. Patrons arriving and departing—including those who have consumed alcohol—would create safety hazards on rural roads designed for residential use.

Finally, the applicant must show that the alleged hardship “has not been self-created.” The applicants purchased the property as a residential home, not as a commercial vineyard or winery. The property was zoned RL-2 when they acquired it, and they were on constructive notice of all applicable zoning restrictions. Having voluntarily purchased a residence in a residential district, they now seek to convert it into a commercial enterprise. New York courts have consistently held that self-created hardship is fatal to a use variance application.

Opponents of the application have raised concerns about the precedent that approval would set. If the application is approved, it could establish a precedent that any homeowner may convert their residential property into a commercial alcohol-serving establishment simply by planting grapevines and declaring themselves a “vineyard.” Such a precedent could effectively nullify the protections afforded to residential neighborhoods throughout the Town of Chatham. The integrity of the Town’s zoning scheme depends on consistent enforcement of the distinction between residential and commercial uses.

If the applicants wish to operate a wine tasting room, they would need to first meet the legal requirements to become a licensed farm winery—including production of at least 50 gallons of wine annually pursuant to ABC Law § 76-a(9)(b), using grapes grown in New York State pursuant to ABC Law § 76-a(5)(a)—and locate their commercial operation in an appropriately zoned Business district.

Tomorrow’s public hearing will give residents an opportunity to submit comments on the proposal. The Town Board, Planning Board, and Zoning Board of Appeals each have jurisdiction over different aspects of such applications.

This article is public and may be shared. It is also available in Powell's syndicated column on NewsBreak.

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Relevant authorities cited in connection with this matter include: N.Y. Alcoholic Beverage Control Law § 76 (Winery License); N.Y. Alcoholic Beverage Control Law § 76-a (Farm Winery License); N.Y. Town Law § 267 (Zoning Board of Appeals); N.Y. Town Law § 267-b (Permitted Action by Board of Appeals); Town of Chatham Zoning Law, Chapter 180; Town of Chatham Zoning Law, Chapter 180, § 180-1 (Purpose); and the New York State Liquor Authority’s Winery Quick Reference.

Links to Referenced Laws and Authorities

N.Y. Alcoholic Beverage Control Law § 76 (Winery License): https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ABC/76

N.Y. Alcoholic Beverage Control Law § 76-a (Farm Winery License): https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/ABC/76-A

N.Y. Town Law § 267 (Zoning Board of Appeals): https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/TWN/267

N.Y. Town Law § 267-b (Permitted Action by Board of Appeals): https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/TWN/267-B

Town of Chatham Local Laws:

Town of Chatham Zoning Law, Chapter 180: https://ecode360.com/10484787

Regulatory Guidance:

New York State Liquor Authority, Winery Quick Reference: https://sla.ny.gov/winery-quick-reference-1

Previous Articles on Fox Hill Vineyards:

©2026 All Rights Reserved Josh Powell/The Powell House Press

josh@thepowellhousepress.com

Next week—assuming we make it, which feels less like assumption and more like prayer these days—the good people of Columbia County will gather for a public forum on the Fox Hill Farm and Vineyard saga.

For those late to the drama: Ed Williams and his wife Cheri want to open a tasting room for their vineyard—which isn't yet ready for wine time. But the tasting room? Urgent, apparently. This is, of course, lipstick on the same pig they trotted out pre-COVID—a wedding venue thinly disguised as agriculture, redux of their first attempt to monetize their large home on Bashford Road. The neighbors went to the mattresses over that iteration. But Ed and Cheri—you have to admire the persistence, if nothing else—kept pivoting to new concepts, all of which the neighborhood has rejected with the same answer: This does not belong here.

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In December, the Zoning Board of Appeals met. The Williamses’ lawyer continued his valiant effort to shoehorn his clients’ wishes into something resembling acceptable and legal. The meeting was so riddled with confusion over the actual land use that the board decided, inexplicably, to hold a public hearing. This is a matter of law—why we’re now treating it as public spectacle, I cannot say.

What I can say is that after covering this story for months and knowing about it for years, I am still learning. A lot.

Most recently, I reached out to everyone who submitted concerns to the town. What I heard back from several of them tells you everything you need to know about this situation.

When people have asked Dr. Williams what he thinks of his neighbors’ concerns—and I heard this from three separate sources who asked not to be identified—his response has been consistent. Verbatim. “I don’t give a fuck what my neighbors think.”

His lawyer’s latest submission to the town confirms this ethos. They’ve abandoned even the pretense of selling their own wine. They’re now openly acknowledging that this tasting room is built for the likes Josh Cellars, not Fox Hill Vineyards. At present, the Williams “farm” does not possess enough vines to justify a tasting room. A dinner party would suffice. This is a fact. As is the continued lack of transparency and none of the leg work that was done by the Silver Brothers located on Shaker Museum Road.

On a personal note: thank you to everyone who reached out to say they’d never have written what I did, but were thrilled someone did.

Many people have contacted me—off the record, and I understand why—expressing their dismay. A few questioned what right I had to weigh in at all. One person pointed out that I have no real history in the town. When I explained my actual history—that I grew up there, owned a property there until 2024 and that I’m the eldest son of Dorothy Purello, one of the town’s beloved residents—he immediately said she would have approved of what I wrote.

One person, not a resident of Columbia County and never has been, has taken a more pit bull approach toward me. I’ll call her Lady Montague. Apparently she’s been mooing like a cow in support of the project. But even she will not commit to writing a letter in support of the project.

My mother and many of her contemporaries have passed on—like the Spencers who once owned Falcon Crest—but the roots remain. Things do get back to me. And everyone’s opinion matters. I mean this. Even when the opinion is more connected with making bank on the backs of a winery that needs a caterer.

People should show up to this public meeting. For all the chatter and snark, this decision will change a community. And why should a community tolerate a neighbor who has made his position so clear? After all, we now know exactly how he feels about his neighbors.

The town meeting is next week, January 22 at 7PM.

My previous articles and letters from the community are available on the Chatham Town’s website: here.

You can also access them here:

This is a follow-up to last week’s article on “Fox Hill Estate and Vineyard.”

I attended Thursday night’s zoning board of appeals meeting. There was no decision whether the Williams will be able to open their tasting room. Why? Because there was a lot of confusion as to the property’s zoning. Specifically, if the property is in a designated “agricultural district” it would make it easier for the project to move forward as there would be protection under the NYS Agricultural laws. No one was able to put their finger on the zoning - the irony - it was the Zoning Board of Appeals.

Well, it is not in a designated agricultural zone (see below).

So the decision, which is a matter of law, was oddly punted to a public hearing. So now’s the time to speak up and ask some real questions and revisit questions that have not been answered.

Starting January 1st, 2026, most of my work moves behind a subscriber paywall.

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Right now, you can lock in a year for $35—or $5/month. After January 1st, the annual rate rises to $50.

Should a private home in a mixed-used residential zone be allowed to side-step requirements? Should a “tasting room” for wine be allowed to charge patrons for admission for what is akin to a bar without a liquor license?

It was openly discussed last night that there is actually no wine currently being produced. Which makes one wonder - why the need for a “tasting room”? Why not just have people over for a glass of wine?

If Fox Hill Vineyard can open a tasting room - selling wine that is not part of the actual farming endeavor - what’s next? Moreover, what exactly is a garage selling alcohol without a liquor license? Maybe it’s just a speakeasy.

Everyone should ask themselves if this is allowed - just where does it end, because this could change everything. It will set a precedent. A burger joint on a patio. An Amazon drop off spot in a driveway. It is a slippery slope.

So maybe sometimes, just sometimes, the past is not only something to remember, but also instructive.

When I was a boy, my mother worked in Albany. She taught school in Arbor Hill for her entire career as an educator—her choice, really. My mother possessed that increasingly rare quality: a sense of social justice that wasn’t just lip service. Being a woman in the 1960s working in what they politely called ‘the ghetto’ was not easy, but she was beloved by the children and parents in what was for all intents and purposes a segregated corner of Albany.

Her refuge, her safe harbor, was our house on Richmond Road. On weekends and school vacations she would toss us kids outside feeling safe in the knowledge we’d not get hit by cars or end up on the back of milk cartons. It gave her a break from kids at work and us at home. Importantly, it gave us a profound love of nature and independence.

My mother loathed driving, so my father—a portrait painter who worked from home in that enviable way artists sometimes managed before “working from home” became code for checking email in sweatpants—would bundle my younger sister and me into the car to collect her after her school day. We always took the same route home: down Route 66, then a right turn onto Richmond Road. It was a long, lovely stretch between 66 and our house. Only two other residences interrupted the pastoral rhythm: Mrs. Heller’s house, an old colonial set back from the dirt road, and a trailer, for the resident farmhand, tucked away to the right before the intersection of Reed and Richmond roads.

Then came our house, and across the street, the barns where the Spencers raised Haflinger ponies—those sturdy, golden creatures that looked like they’d wandered out of a Brueghel painting. I was four when I witnessed my first foal being born. Good Friday 1969. My father and Mr. Spencer were in the stall, sleeves rolled up, helping to pull the young creature into the world. The vet, Dr. Zweig, pronounced it a miracle that the foal survived. They named it Friday, naturally. Because when you’re delivered on Good Friday against long odds, subtlety seems beside the point.

Between our house and the Spencers’ place on the corner of Richmond and Bashford roads, there were no other homes. The Selbys built theirs—now the Alberts’—in the 1980s.

The Spencers, in the early 1980s, then well into their golden years, sold their home—horses gone, that chapter closed—and built something new that’s now Sue Tanner’s. The Williams’ house hadn’t been constructed yet. The rest of Bashford held families like the Valentinis, who kept an African Grey parrot named Coco. Mrs. Valentini owned the Warm Ewe yarn shop on Chatham’s Main Street, tucked adjacent to The Main Street Bookstore, the Handicrafters, and Brown’s Shoes—the latter three owned by the Marks, the Blocks, and the Rosens respectively, that particular constellation of Jewish merchants giving Main Street whatever cultural pluralism and sophistication it possessed.

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It was an idyllic start to life, the kind of childhood that now seems as remote as daguerreotypes. Some readers are undoubtedly wondering if my opposition to the Williams’ wine vineyard and tasting room is nothing more than the protest of a man with a pen and a reflexive hostility to change.

I’m not opposed to change. I’m opposed to the kind that destroys community fabric for the sake of someone’s boozy business fantasy. The kind that turns dirt roads designed for horses and slow-moving cars into commercial thoroughfares. The kind that mistakes agricultural cosplay for actual farming.

All people really need to do is examine what has already happened in this community—object lessons in what happens when ambition collides with inadequate oversight, when people and towns fail to ask the hard questions before the damage becomes permanent.

The Pond That Died of Neglect

Consider the large brick house on the square in Old Chatham. When Mr. Quinn sold it, the woman who bought it suffered from that peculiarly American delusion that enthusiasm can substitute for competent stewardship. The dam—her responsibility—fell into disrepair, a gradual collapse of infrastructure that happened in plain sight. But it was her property…people took the hand’s off approach.

That pond was every local kid’s winter rec center. While parents would meet at Jackson’s —drinking and dining in the style of 1970s leisure — we children claimed the ice as our kingdom. Mr. Mickle, who owned the big house across from the pond—Albert Callan’s old place—installed a floodlight for us. It had a switch we could operate ourselves, a small gesture of trust that seems unthinkable in our current age of liability panic and helicopter parenting. After snowstorms, we’d descend like a swarm, the sound of skates scraping and shovels pushing snow off ice creating that particular music of childhood—the metallic scritch-scratch punctuated by laughter and hockey sticks slapping pucks.

On that pond, Ilana Marks and I trained for the Olympics. Never mind that I wore hockey skates and our routine consisted entirely of holding hands, skating fast in circles and gliding far into the now long-lost, frozen canal. We were never headed for gold. The dream was sufficient unto itself.

Today’s children won’t have those memories because the pond is gone—choked by cattails and milfoil, those botanical markers of neglect made visible. The water that once froze smooth as glass in January now sits stagnant and diminished, a monument to what happens when owners view property as asset rather than trust.

Subsequent owners tried their hand at Airbnb—the neighbors objected with the ferocity you’d expect when strangers start showing up on your square with rolling suitcases and Airbnb attitudes. They poured money into the house. The pond got nothing. Dr. Ira Marks—the GOAT of the OC, a man who actually understood what community meant—tried to orchestrate restoration before he died. He failed. It still hasn’t been done. It won’t be. People don’t know what it was.

And then there was the architectural vandalism on the house itself. One need only look. Someone built what can only be described as a hospital wing onto the historic house—an addition so grotesque, so fundamentally wrong, that if buildings could develop cancer, this would be classified as a Stage IV malignancy.

I cannot imagine the Petersons who lived in the large white house across the street looking across the square at that horror show every morning. Though perhaps after a few years, horror becomes wallpaper. You stop seeing it because seeing it would require acknowledging that you live in a community that had no way of stopping it. No one likes powerlessness.

Had there been a historical preservation commission—with the power to say “no” and make it stick—Old Chatham would look entirely different today. But there wasn’t, and Old Chatham lost a treasure.

The Old Chatham Sheepherding Company

Perhaps a more relevant comparison exists on Shaker Museum Road. Few lived there when I was growing up: Lisa and Peter Cox, the Mayers, Anita Drown, Wiggie Williams, a few others and the Jurings on the corner of Shaker Museum Road and Route 13. As children, we’d bicycle down to what we called Drown’s swimming hole. Pony Club held their shows there. And of course, there was the Shaker Museum, that repository of American austerity and craft, reminding us that people once built furniture to last centuries rather than until the IKEA warranty expired.

Nancy and Tom Clark bought Wiggie’s house and transformed it into the Old Chatham Sheepherding Company. They installed a creamery and built substantial barns for their flock.

It was genuinely lovely—a serious agricultural operation that employed local people, contributed to the tax base, and somehow managed to be both commercially successful and aesthetically appropriate to its setting.

Some at first objected to the Inn, of course. There are always objectors. But the entire enterprise made sense within the landscape. It enhanced rather than violated. It added rather than subtracted.

The Clarks eventually sold their house on Route 13—the old Cutler place— closed the Inn, and moved in full-time. They maintained the creamery, kept it contributing. Tom kept the farm operational for years, the land hosting the now-defunct Old Chatham Horse Trials, back when horses still mattered more than Escalades.

Time, that merciless accountant, is never kind. The Clarks aged—as we all do, if we’re lucky—and decided to sell what some still called Wiggie’s, others the Sheepherding Company, and many simply the Clark’s.

They didn’t get anywhere near their asking price. Some said the interior required demolition of the bar built for the Inn. The sprawling old house and outbuildings demanded constant attention and deep pockets. And then there was the sheep operation itself—they’d spared no expense, built it properly, done it right. But try finding actual shepherds in 21st-century America. Try finding people willing to work with livestock for wages that would make a barista laugh. What had seemed like a sound investment—to many of us, myself included—became that most American of tragedies: the white elephant. The thing that made perfect sense until it suddenly didn’t, until the market decided it wanted something else entirely.

Eventually it sold. The new owners, Silver Brothers Distillery, bought it. The barns were converted and they too are planning on opening a tasting room. Their plans on this tasting room are vague in some respects. It is a work in progress. What is not vague? Their detailed site plan and environmental impact study. They did their work. You can read it here.

Their farming is real and their monthly newsletter is up to date and provides a concrete document and forum to inform the community and, importantly, hear from them.

They repurposed the barns and disclose things like community employment. It is clearly a business with benefits to the community and transparency. It is also using the farmland as farmland. They are using an existing infrastructure. Their plans for a tasting room will carry the potential for risk. All tasting facilities do. Fact.

No report can mitigate the public safety issues that operations like these have the potential to bring to communities. This is not to say it can’t be done right.

But behind every carefully curated Instagram aesthetic—the golden-hour photos of wine glasses against vineyard sunsets, the rustic chic of repurposed barn wood, the whole performative authenticity of it all—lies a history of alarming public safety failures in this industry—and it should be discussed openly.

This is not conjecture. This is not NIMBYism dressed up as concern. This is what the data actually shows when you bother to look.

Wine tastings typically involve six samples of 1-3 ounces each—up to 9 ounces total, nearly two standard drinks at one location.

Visits to multiple tasting venues compound the effect as the data shows. Another tasting venue only brings more risk. And while some are on more “friendly” roads like Harvest Spirit’ on Rt 9 nearby, it is not just roads that poses risk. It is not unusual for people to go on tasting room field trips visiting multiple venues on the same day.

The 2015 Silver Trail Distillery explosion in Kentucky killed distiller Kyle Rogers and critically injured another worker. Investigation found the still wasn’t designed to hold pressure but was equipped with a relief valve rated at 150 psi when manufacturer specifications stated it “operates on less than one pound of pressure.” Since the 1990s, major distillery fires have destroyed facilities at Heaven Hill (90,000 barrels, $30 million in losses), Wild Turkey, Jim Beam twice, with warehouse collapses at Barton 1792 (120,000 gallons spilled) and O.Z. Tyler. The Wild Turkey fire killed hundreds of thousands of fish along 66 miles of the Kentucky River.

The dangers are not abstract, pollution threats are real - just look at Nassau Lake. Review the study that the Silver Brothers provided to the town on water concerns to both the agricultural need and the potential threat to the Kinderhook Creek. They paid for and made public documents that provide a plan that Silver Brothers will not be a Wild Turkey or a Nassau Lake.

The explosive growth of wine tourism has overwhelmed rural communities never designed for such traffic—communities built for tractors and horse trailers, not tour buses and bachelorette party vans. The winery scene on Long Island’s North Fork exploded to 43 producers from a handful in the 1970s, straining roads, emergency services, and police resources past their breaking point in communities where the tax base can’t possibly support the infrastructure demands.

One venue, Vineyard 48, shut its doors amid an emergency suspension of its liquor license in October 2017, after it became “a focal point of police attention,” according to court documents.

Police were forced to dedicate two or three officers every weekend simply to monitor this single venue. That’s a grotesque diversion of law enforcement resources that rural communities can ill afford.

The local farmers out on Cutchogue - actual farmers, complained that tasting rooms created traffic congestion that made moving equipment between fields dangerous, parking nightmares that block access roads during harvest, and sewage issues harmful to genuine agricultural operations and salmon habitat when “temporary” facilities became permanent and overwhelmed.

These aren’t mere inconveniences. They represent fundamental conflicts between agricultural preservation and commercial entertainment venues masquerading as farms. The industry has successfully lobbied for “farm” designations providing favorable zoning and tax treatment while operating what are transparently bars and event venues—having their cake, eating it too, and leaving the mess for someone else to clean up while they retreat to their other houses for the summer, age out or go belly up (think SABA Wine in Chatham).

The industry’s response to mounting safety concerns more often has been performative rather than substantive—theater designed to forestall actual regulation while maintaining the appearance of responsible stewardship.

Concerns over legal liability for intoxicated guests have encouraged most wineries to ostentatiously limit the number and size of pours—posted policies promising “responsible service” that look impressive in their liability insurance applications. Yet an Inside Edition investigation captured footage of staff pouring generous helpings for “tastings” at Vineyard 48, revealing how easily these limits evaporate when profit beckons, when the tip jar is looking light, when the bachelorette party wants “just a little more” and threatens a bad Yelp review if you don’t comply.

Trade associations have created safety programs serving primarily as public relations exercises rather than meaningful reform. Approximately 17,500 people from production breweries have completed the Brewers Association’s online brewing safety course since 2014—impressive-sounding numbers that look great in press releases. Yet brewery injuries increased from 160 in 2011 to 530 in 2014 during this exact period of supposed safety enhancement.

Voluntary training programs prove insufficient when workplace safety culture remains fundamentally broken, when the incentive structure rewards corner-cutting and punishes caution, when the guy who takes time for proper safety procedures is the guy who doesn’t hit production targets and doesn’t get promoted.

Changing the face of a community produces repercussions that ripple outward for decades—consequences that become visible only after approvals have been granted, infrastructure installed, precedents established.

The owners of “The Brick House” in Old Chatham harbored business ambitions—the pond and the community anchor it represented to multiple generations simply didn’t factor into their calculations. They saw an asset to be maximized, not a trust to be preserved. The pond died of neglect while they focused on Airbnb revenue projections. Now it’s gone, and with it, the winter memories an entire generation might have had.

The Old Chatham Sheepherding Company was genuinely inspired—a serious agricultural operation that respected its context while contributing meaningfully to the local economy. But changes to the property cratered its value when the market shifted, when the Clarks aged out, when finding shepherds in 21st-century America proved impossible. But the Clarks stuck it out until their property sold. This is not always the case. All one has to do is take a ride down to the end of Southerland Road where the old Ooms farm died and was abandoned—the house and barn in tatters—trailers rusting—garbage tossed out of cars as if it was a dump.

Like the Clarks, Ed and Cheri Williams won’t live forever—nobody does, though all of us act as though mortality is negotiable. What happens to Fox Hill Estate & Vineyard when they’re gone? Does it become another white elephant? It is a relevant question. And yet another uncomfortable truth worth confronting: Ed and Cheri listed their property for sale three years ago. What really is their commitment?

One way of gauging commitment would be conducting EPA studies. Sharing relevant farming experience. Not misleading people with an academic history at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences when your studies had nothing to do with farming. It means bringing in experts who specialize in agriculture regulation—not claiming that healthcare regulatory compliance is the same thing. It means not calling yourself a farmer when the cattle on an adjacent piece of land you own are not even yours. And it means listening to and addressing all the people who oppose this project and acknowledging that no one is on the public record supporting it.

Ignoring community concerns, obfuscation—be it irrelevant studies or claims—and attacking the messenger might be a strategy.

I don’t think it will work.

Actually, it’s unnecessary when right down the road there’s a template on how to do it right.

Some didn’t want that distillary, and that’s okay. The town made an informed decision because they had good data provided to them by Silver Brothers.

This might be a good starting point for Fox Hill Vineyards. Silver Brothers’ application submitted years ago is online. It’s a great template.

But there remains that pesky zoning issue and a lot of unanswered questions.

Part One: The Grapes of Wrath

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References

Brewers Association. (2016, February 16). Travelocity debuts new beer tourism index. https://brewersassociation.org/communicating-craft/travelocity-debuts-new-beer-tourism-index

Daley, E. (2017, January 24). Beer tourism boom brews up across the US, showing no signs of slowing. BeverageDaily. https://www.beveragedaily.com/Article/2017/01/24/Beer-Tourism-boom-brews-up-across-the-US-showing-no-signs-of-slowing

Grand View Research. (2024). Beer tourism market size, share & growth report, 2030. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/beer-tourism-market-report

Grand View Research. (2024). Wine tourism market size, share & trends report, 2030. https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/wine-tourism-market-report

Hotelagio. (2024). Wine tourism statistics: Trends and insights for 2025. https://hotelagio.com/wine-tourism-statistics/

Shore Craft Beer. (2021). Craft beer tourism research study. https://shorecraftbeer.com/craft-beer-tourism-research-study/

Terry-McElrath, Y. M., Patrick, M. E., Evans-Polce, R. J., & Schulenberg, J. E. (2023). Alcohol use contexts (social settings, drinking games/specials, and locations) as predictors of high-intensity drinking on a given day among U.S. young adults. Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research, 47(2), 273-284. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10084771/

Tourism, Arizona Office of. (2024, June 25). Arizona wine tourism study reveals over 500% growth since 2011. https://tourism.az.gov/arizona-wine-tourism-study-reveals-over-500-growth-since-2011/

Vinetur. (2024, October 22). The rise of wine tourism in the U.S. https://www.vinetur.com/en/2024102282482/the-rise-of-wine-tourism-in-the-us.html

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I wrote this a few years ago, after my friend EB and I went on one of our little explorations. I’ve updated it. This week demonstrated to me just how important this story remains and how crucial it is to protect the environment. It also illustrates how a single person’s financial gain becomes a community issue. While the toxins maybe different than those used on grapes, they are damaging all the same. Everyone deserves to know if their neighbors are using substances that have the potential to cause harm.

Nassau Lake, in upstate New York’s Rensselaer County, was once described by a local newspaper as “Little Lake George”—a charming designation suggesting weekend picnics, fishing rods, the wholesome recreations of mid-century American life. That was before Dewey Loeffel, who operated a waste oil removal business from 1952 to 1968 on nineteen acres of low-lying land between two wooded hills. For over sixteen years, his unlined landfill swallowed more than 46,000 tons of industrial hazardous waste: solvents, waste oils, polychlorinated biphenyls, acids, sludges, and sundry other poisons. General Electric alone contributed approximately 37,530 tons. Bendix Corporation and Schenectady Chemicals rounded out the guest list at this toxic dinner party.

The waste was dumped into lagoons, poured into pits, buried in drums. Some of it was simply pumped onto the ground. Some of it was burned. By 1970, Loeffel himself acknowledged that the swamp he had transformed into a dumping ground was devoid of plant and animal life. One pictures him surveying this moonscape of his own creation with the satisfied air of a job well done.

The neighbors noticed. They noticed the dead fish floating in the streams. They noticed their cattle dying. They noticed the fires that erupted spontaneously at the dump, as if the earth itself were registering its objection. In 1968, the State of New York finally ordered Loeffel to cease operations. He obligingly covered the mess with soil, constructed some drainage channels, and presumably went about his business. But by then, the toxins had embarked on their own journey—seeping through aquifers, trickling into tributaries, making their leisurely way toward Nassau Lake and far beyond.

To understand the scope of what Dewey Loeffel’s dump unleashed, one must trace the path of water as it flows downhill from that nineteen-acre parcel of poisoned earth. The contamination did not politely confine itself to the property lines. It migrated, as water does, following the ancient logic of gravity and watershed.

First came the Northwest Drainage Ditch, the primary channel carrying surface runoff from the landfill. This fed into a low-lying area and then into what was bureaucratically designated as Tributary T11A—a 1,900-foot stream that the residents of Nassau eventually rechristened Little Thunder Brook, naming it after a figure from the Anti-Rent Wars of the 1840s. The renaming was an act of reclamation, an assertion that this poisoned waterway belonged to the community and its history rather than to the EPA’s filing system. The sediment along Little Thunder Brook’s banks tested at PCB levels exceeding 1,000 parts per million—concentrations so high that the EPA ordered emergency removal in 2018.

Little Thunder Brook empties into the Valatie Kill, a protected trout stream that once supported a thriving fishery. The Valatie Kill flows southwest for approximately 2.7 miles before reaching Nassau Lake. But Nassau Lake is not the terminus. The contamination continues downstream into Kinderhook Lake in Columbia County, then into Kinderhook Creek, then Stockport Creek, and finally—inevitably—into the Hudson River, the nation’s largest Superfund site, where General Electric’s PCBs have been accumulating since the company began dumping them directly into the water decades ago.

The water treatment plant that GE and SI Group constructed at the landfill site extracts contaminated groundwater, treats it to EPA-acceptable levels, and then discharges it into the Valatie Kill. This is the solution: take the poison, dilute it sufficiently to meet regulatory thresholds, and release it into the same watershed it has been contaminating for seventy years. The villages and towns downstream—Valatie, Kinderhook, Stockport—have watched this treated effluent flow past their communities for more than a decade now, trusting that the EPA’s acceptable levels are, in fact, acceptable.

In 2021, torrential rains tested that trust. Up to five inches fell on the area, causing widespread flooding. Mead Road, where the landfill sits, was shut down. Sediments from the Superfund site poured into Little Thunder Brook and down into the Valatie Kill. “Because of the volume of transfer down the streams, this isn’t just a Nassau problem,” Town Supervisor David Fleming observed. “This is a Capital Region problem.” The EPA acknowledged that the storm “may have transported PCB-impacted sediments to downstream areas”—a rather delicate way of describing toxic sludge washing through a protected trout stream and into the lakes and rivers that thousands of people depend upon.

Meanwhile, there is also the Southeast Drainage System: surface water flowing from the Loeffel site into an unnamed tributary that feeds Valley Stream, which flows through Smith Pond before discharging into Nassau Lake. State investigations determined this pathway was “not significantly impacted”—cold comfort to anyone familiar with how such assessments tend to underestimate long-term cumulative effects.

Then there are the groundwater contamination plumes, spreading invisibly beneath the surface. PCB contamination persists for at least half a mile south of the Superfund site, with five known residential well contaminations. In 2023, the EPA detected elevated volatile organic compound levels at 320 feet below ground level—the poison having migrated not just horizontally through the watershed but vertically, deep into the aquifer that supplies drinking water to homes throughout the region.

The official tally of affected waterways reads like a geographical indictment: the Northwest Drainage Ditch, the Low-Lying Area, Mead Road Pond, the Mead Road Pond Spoil Banks, Tributary T11A (Little Thunder Brook), the Valatie Kill, Smith Pond, Valley Stream, Nassau Lake, Kinderhook Lake, Kinderhook Creek, Stockport Creek, and ultimately the Hudson River. New York State maintains fish consumption advisories for Nassau Lake, the Valatie Kill, and Kinderhook Lake. Women under fifty and children under fifteen are warned to eat no fish whatsoever from these waters. Everyone else is advised to limit consumption according to species and location—as if anyone could reasonably be expected to calibrate their fishing habits to a matrix of PCB concentrations.

The Columbia County village of Valatie, population 1,800, lies just thirteen miles downstream from the Loeffel site. This winter, elevated levels of PFOS—a different class of toxic chemical—were discovered in the village’s public drinking water system. Whether this contamination originated at the Loeffel site remains uninvestigated. The state has given no indication it intends to find out. The village is working on treatment, filtration, mitigation. The source remains a mystery no one in authority seems eager to solve.

PCBs are, in the lexicon of environmental science, “persistent.” This is a polite way of saying they never go away. They do not biodegrade. They accumulate in fatty tissue and travel up the food chain with the patience of geological time. They have been linked to cancer, immune suppression, reproductive failure, and developmental delays in children. As David Carpenter of the University at Albany has observed, there is no level of PCB exposure that science can confidently declare safe. The chemicals may eventually disappear, he notes, but not in any human lifetime—perhaps over thousands of years. Small comfort to the residents of Nassau, who were not consulted about whether they wished to participate in this multigenerational experiment.

In 1980, New York State issued a fish consumption advisory for Nassau Lake. That advisory remains in effect today. Let that sink in: for forty-five years, the people who live near this once-charming lake have been warned not to eat what comes out of it. The “Little Lake George” has become a place where the catch of the day comes with a government health warning.

Here is where the story acquires its particular American piquancy. In 1980, General Electric—that beacon of industrial civilization, that bringer of good things to life—entered into an agreement with New York State covering the Loeffel landfill and six other PCB-contaminated sites. GE contributed thirty million dollars to a cleanup fund, and in exchange, the state agreed the company would never have to pay another dime. Ever. This arrangement, known as the “Seven Sites” agreement, must have occasioned considerable satisfaction in GE’s legal department. Thirty million dollars to make an open-ended liability disappear forever was, by any measure, a bargain.

Part of that money paid for a clay cap placed over the dump in 1984. The cap was, one supposes, intended to contain the problem—to draw a line under the whole unfortunate business and allow everyone to move on. The chemicals, however, had not read the agreement. They continued to migrate. They continued to poison. In 2009, when the EPA finally got around to collecting sediment samples from the waterways downstream, PCBs were still present, still spreading, still doing what PCBs do.

In March 2011, the Dewey Loeffel Landfill was added to the EPA’s National Priorities List—the federal government’s roster of the most contaminated places in America. The site, it turned out, contained twice the toxic load of Love Canal, that ur-text of American environmental disaster. One might think this distinction would have prompted urgent action, a marshaling of resources commensurate with the scale of the catastrophe. One would be touchingly naive.

What followed instead was the familiar Superfund minuet: studies commissioned, agreements negotiated, treatment plants constructed, all moving with the stately deliberation of continental drift. In 2012, GE and SI Group agreed to build a water treatment facility and pay up to ten million dollars. GE noted, with evident pride, that it had already spent more than twenty million on cleanup over the preceding decades. The company also pointed out, rather defensively, that it had never owned or operated the Loeffel landfill. This is technically true and entirely beside the point. GE did not need to own the landfill; it merely needed to fill it with poison.

The discoveries kept coming, each one a fresh reminder of just how thoroughly the area had been contaminated. In 2014, investigators found 1,4-dioxane—a known carcinogen—in treated water samples. In 2017, the EPA reached an agreement with GE to address the PCB-contaminated soil and sediment in Little Thunder Brook and several upstream waterbodies. In 2018, crews began excavating a “hot spot” where PCB levels exceeded 1,000 parts per million. In 2019, acting on a tip, EPA investigators found a 10,000-gallon chemical tank buried on the Loeffel family’s own property, along with leaking barrels and unsafe PCB levels in the groundwater. It seems Dewey Loeffel had not confined his environmental contributions to the landfill that bore his name. The old country saying about not fouling one’s own nest apparently held no purchase with him.

In 2020, after identifying more extensive contamination in Little Thunder Brook than previously understood, the EPA and GE reached yet another agreement—this one requiring a full remedial investigation to determine the extent of contamination and study feasible cleanup options. Stone dams were installed in the brook to limit sediment transport downstream while the investigation proceeded. One pictures these dams as a kind of environmental triage, an admission that the poison was still moving and that stopping it entirely was beyond anyone’s current capability.

And what of the people who have lived amid this slow-motion poisoning? In 1999, the town of Nassau and a citizens’ group conducted their own health survey of residents living closest to the site. The results were stunning: of one hundred respondents, seventy-six reported having some form of cancer. Neighbors had the same cancers. Pets had the same cancers as their owners. The survey revealed what epidemiologists call “clusters”—patterns that cry out for investigation.

No investigation came. Town Supervisor David Fleming has spent years trying to get state or federal agencies to conduct a comprehensive health study. The agencies have declined, citing various excuses. The largest public health question raised by the Dewey Loeffel site—what has this contamination done to the people who live near it?—remains officially unanswered. One suspects this is not an accident. The answer might prove inconvenient.

Meanwhile, the EPA estimates that a full risk assessment will not be available until 2026—nearly seventy-five years after the dumping began. The treatment plant continues to operate. The fish advisories remain in place. Property values in affected areas have cratered, leaving residents trapped in homes they cannot sell, drinking water from wells they cannot entirely trust, living atop a toxic legacy they did not create and cannot escape.

Town Supervisor Fleming has noted that when you look at the whole site at Loeffel, you are not talking about fifteen acres around the landfill. You are talking about impacts through the water table, tributaries, and soil contamination spanning more than a thousand acres. It affects more than just Nassau. It affects Kinderhook and Valatie and Stockport and every community downstream, all the way to the Hudson River.

Fifty-three million Americans live within three miles of a Superfund site. They are, for the most part, not the Americans who summer in the Hamptons or winter in Palm Beach. They are not the Americans whose concerns animate the editorial pages of prestige newspapers or the fundraising appeals of either political party. They are simply people who had the misfortune to live in places that powerful corporations found convenient for disposing of their waste—people who learned, too late, that the free market’s efficiency in externalizing costs meant their children would swim in poisoned lakes and their tap water would require filtration systems.

The Superfund program operates on the principle that polluters should pay. It is a noble principle, and it is largely fiction. The polluters pay for treatment plants and clay caps and endless rounds of studies. They pay lawyers to negotiate agreements that limit their liability. They do not pay for the cancers, the stillbirths, the children with developmental delays, the decades of anxiety, the loss of a way of life. Those costs are absorbed by the people of places like Nassau—communities too small and too poor to command the attention of anyone with the power to help them, left to drink their water and eat their fish and hope for the best while the cleanup crawls forward at a pace calibrated to corporate convenience rather than human need.

General Electric’s former chairman Jack Welch was once celebrated as the greatest CEO of his era, a titan of shareholder value creation. Somewhere in that glittering legacy of acquisitions and divestitures and quarterly earnings beats, there is a nineteen-acre landfill in upstate New York that will be leaching poison into the groundwater long after everyone who remembers Welch’s name has turned to dust. The Dewey Loeffel site is not part of the official GE story—not mentioned in the hagiographies, not celebrated at the business schools. But it is as much a part of the company’s legacy as any aircraft engine or medical imaging device. The chemicals do not care about corporate reputation. They simply persist.

And they travel. From a swamp in Nassau to Little Thunder Brook to the Valatie Kill to Nassau Lake to Kinderhook Lake to Kinderhook Creek to Stockport Creek to the Hudson River—an unbroken chain of contamination stretching across two counties, through protected trout streams and public water supplies, past villages where children play and fishermen cast their lines, all the way to the great river that Henry Hudson sailed four centuries ago in search of a passage to the riches of the East. He found instead a valley of extraordinary beauty, a landscape that would become home to millions. What he could not have imagined was that the descendants of those settlers would turn portions of that valley into a dumping ground for industrial poison, and that the poison would still be flowing, still be spreading, still be accumulating in the bodies of fish and birds and people, seventy years after the last truck unloaded its cargo at Dewey Loeffel’s landfill.

This is what a Superfund site looks like: not a dramatic explosion but a quiet, relentless seepage; not a moment of crisis but a permanent condition; not a problem to be solved but a wound to be managed, indefinitely, by people who had no hand in creating it and no power to make it stop. The people of Nassau have been living with Dewey Loeffel’s legacy for seven decades. They will be living with it for decades more. Somewhere, in a boardroom or a law office or a governmental hearing room, someone is undoubtedly describing this as progress.

And here is perhaps the most staggering detail of all, the fact that should keep regulators and legislators awake at night: this entire catastrophe—the poisoned lakes, the contaminated trout streams, the cancer clusters, the fish advisories spanning forty-five years, the plume of carcinogens reaching 320 feet into the earth, the chain of toxins flowing inexorably toward the Hudson River—all of it traces back to one man, operating on his own private property, answerable to no one.

Dewey Loeffel was not a corporation. He was not a government agency. He was a single individual who saw a business opportunity in accepting other people’s waste, who dug some holes in a swamp he owned, and who spent sixteen years filling those holes with 46,000 tons of industrial poison. No environmental impact statement. No public hearing. No regulatory oversight worth the name. Just a man, his land, and an endless procession of trucks carrying the effluvia of American industry.

You can read about this on New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation website: Click here.

Columbia County lies in New York’s upper Hudson Valley, bordered by the Hudson River to the west and the Berkshire foothills to the east. The Town of Chatham occupies the county’s eastern portion near the Massachusetts border, encompassing several distinct hamlets: Chatham village serves as the commercial center, with a walkable main street and the historic Crandell Theatre; East Chatham stretches toward the Taconic Range along rural roads; Old Chatham is known for its horse farms and the Old Chatham Country Store; Malden Bridge sits quietly along the Kinderhook Creek in the town’s northeastern corner; North Chatham follows Route 203 through traditional farmland; and Chatham Center marks a small crossroads between the village and Old Chatham. The area remains a mix of working agriculture and newer residential development, with local planning boards regularly weighing questions of growth and preservation.

You see it in the house first—the stone façade, the climbing pillars, the architectural aspiration bellowing from the hilltop like a desperate personal ad. Look at me. LOOK AT ME. Some would say it screams money. Some have said it screams bad taste. In Columbia County, New York, where understatement was once considered a virtue and the old families built their farmhouses to weather quietly into the landscape, the Williams residence at 509 Bashford Road makes a different kind of statement entirely. It is the built equivalent of a man who tells you within five minutes of meeting him that he loves Paris in the spring and skiing in Gstaad.

Dr. Edwin Williams is a facial plastic surgeon—a professional improver of God’s rough drafts. His wife Cherie runs the business side of his practice. Together they have spent five years attempting to transform their 53.7-acre estate—assessed at a casual $3.75 million—into something called Fox Hill Estate & Vineyard, complete with tasting room, gravel parking lot, and the unmistakable infrastructure of a party palace in waiting. That they chose to name their venture after an already-existing Fox Hill down the road tells you everything about their relationship to originality. The neighbors, who moved to this corner of Chatham precisely because Bashford Road is unpaved, private, and perfect to hack out on your horse, were not consulted. This is horse country after all. It is also a tight community. News travels fast.

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I grew up there—on Richmond Road, which ends right at the foot of the proposed Fox Hill Estate & Vineyard. In the 1960s and ‘70s, while my contemporaries in Albany were learning whatever it is city kids learn, I was learning about the land, about farm animals, about the particular quality of silence you can only find where the roads are still dirt, and the horses still have the right of way. The Spencers were my neighbors then—dear family friends who lived on Bashford Road directly across from the Williams property.

Some residents wonder what their quiet lives might be like if this modern-day “Falcon Crest” comes to fruition. But I’ll get to them—and to my own history with Ed Williams, which involves a Facebook argument about hydroxychloroquine that revealed more about his character than any planning document ever could.

In my late forties, I moved back to the area, ironically buying a house on Fox Hill Road where my neighbors own Fox Hill Farm and commissioned a tasteful sign to say so. The Williamses couldn’t even be bothered to consult us before naming their vanity project. It was a concern because my road (and yeah, I owned the whole road) would be mistaken for their venue. How many potential couples from Brooklyn checking out wedding venues would type “Fox Hill Chatham” into their weekend-only Range Rover’s GPS and plow up my road? But nomenclature theft, it turns out, is the least of their offenses.

The origin story tells you everything. As one neighbor informed the Planning Board, The Williams’s interest in turning their property into a wedding venue first surfaced publicly on Cherie Williams’s Facebook page about 5 years ago. Their neighbors were not happy and expressed their concerns. Friends and neighbors were shocked at Ed and Cherie’s callous indifference. Note the sequence: announce your plans on Facebook, dismiss the objections of everyone who actually lives there, proceed as if consensus were a quaint irrelevance.

In 2019, Fox Hill Estate began advertising as a Wedding Venue; the website was removed a few years ago. It seems the Williamses’ saw the writing on the wall and in 2020 grape vines were planted. Why? To use NYS Agriculture and Markets Laws for the newest incarnation of the wedding venue: a wine tasting room. First the dream of becoming Columbia County’s answer to a Hamptons party barn. Then, when the zoning proved inconvenient, the agricultural fig leaf. Plant some grapes, call yourself a farmer, and Andy Cohen shows up with his cameras and posse of tacky housewives from the nearest franchise. It is a strategy familiar to anyone who has watched the wealthy discover that money can usually find a loophole.

The initial application proposed weddings for 100 to 150 guests. Peter McKenna, a retired farmer who actually knows what farming looks like, reminded the board what that original vision promised: “When the Williams first advertised their property as a wedding venue 4 years ago, the Fox Hill wedding site trumpeted that once the dancing started, partying could continue to the wee hours.” Partying to the wee hours. On a dirt road. In horse country. Where people moved specifically to escape noise.

When that proposal died on the vine, pun intended (the Williams let it age out), there was a sigh of relief.

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It was short lived.

They returned with another application - something “scaled back”—a tasting room in a converted 700-square-foot garage, fifteen events per year, fifteen to twenty guests (though other documents mention forty), portable restrooms, disposable cups. The modesty is tactical, of course. Everyone in Chatham recognizes the playbook. You approve the tasting room, and suddenly the tasting room needs a kitchen. The kitchen needs a patio. The patio needs a tent for overflow. Before you know it, you’re living next to a destination wedding factory, and the Planning Board is explaining that their hands are tied because the original approval didn’t specifically prohibit amplified renditions of “I Gotta Feeling” at midnight.

Douglas Welch, president of the Chatham Dirt Road Coalition, has seen this movie before: “This special use permit has no enforcement capacity. The applicant’s claimed intent to limit the special events to 6 per year should be taken cautiously. Should tempting profitable opportunities arise for 7, or 8, or more large events, what recourse do their neighbors have?”

One resident asked, “Who will ‘shut down’ their seventh event?” The answer, of course, is no one. No one ever shuts down the seventh event.

The application file makes for riveting reading—if your taste runs to the spectacle of ambition colliding with bureaucratic reality. The town’s consulting engineer issued a review in October 2025 that catalogs everything the applicants have failed to provide: written responses to comments from the Planning Board, from neighbors, from consultants. Site plans showing existing features. Mapping of potential wetlands and the 100-foot buffer zones. Five years into this saga. Five years. And the applicants still haven’t done the basic homework.

But let’s talk about what they are proposing to do to the land—because the bucolic imagery of a vineyard tends to obscure some deeply inconvenient realities about what commercial grape cultivation entails.

Vineyards are not the pastoral enterprises the Williamses would have the Planning Board or the community believe. They are chemical-intensive agricultural operations that require repeated applications of fungicides, pesticides, and herbicides throughout the growing season. Grapes are notoriously susceptible to fungal diseases—powdery mildew, downy mildew, botrytis bunch rot. In Columbia County, where humid summers create ideal conditions for these pathogens, vintners typically spray fungicides every seven to fourteen days from bud break through veraison. That is not occasional treatment. That is a recurring chemical regimen spanning months.

The fungicides commonly used in viticulture—compounds like sulfur, copper-based products, synthetic organics—do not stay neatly on the grapes. They drift on the breeze. They settle on neighboring properties. They run off with rainwater into soil and streams. And where, exactly, does that runoff go? Toward the wetlands that sit at the base of the Williams hill. The wetlands that have not been properly mapped. The wetlands for which no jurisdictional determination has been obtained from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

Neighbors have raised the alarm. Lisa and Gary Seff highlighted “the presence of NYS Regulated Wetlands, a DEC designated Check Zone, and Federal Wetlands (National Wetlands Inventory)” on portions of the property. Karen McGraw questioned “the impact on the stream and wetlands located at the base of the hill and questioned inaccurate information contained in a Short Environmental Assessment Form submitted by the Williams.” Another resident observed that “a parking lot is planned very near wetlands, in a residential neighborhood and in view of neighbors.”

Wetlands in New York are regulated for very specific reasons. They control flooding by absorbing runoff. They filter pollutants from water before it enters streams and aquifers. They provide critical habitat for wildlife. They are, in effect, nature’s own water treatment system. And the Williamses are proposing to put a parking lot, a commercial operation, and a chemically-intensive vineyard on the hill above them—without bothering to determine whether state and federal wetland regulations even permit what they’re planning to do.

Then there is the water. Vineyards are thirsty. A mature vineyard may manage on rainfall in a good year, but a young vineyard establishing root systems—like this one with its 400 plants and dreams of 800—requires supplemental irrigation, particularly during dry spells. This means thousands of gallons over the course of a growing season. Where is that water coming from? A well, presumably. The same aquifer that serves the neighboring properties. And what happens when you begin extracting significant volumes of water from a shared underground source? Ask any hydrologist. The answer involves words like “drawdown” and “depletion” and “impacts to neighboring wells.” But no one has asked a hydrologist, because no comprehensive environmental review has been conducted.

This is not an oversight. This seems to be a strategy. The Williamses have not provided the DEC wetland mapping—why? Perhaps because the mapping might reveal that their plans violate setback requirements. They have not conducted a proper environmental review—why? Perhaps because the review might conclude that the chemical loading, the water extraction, and the infrastructure impacts are inconsistent with residential zoning in a sensitive ecological area. They have not done the studies because, it seems, they do not want to know what the studies would say.

The traffic study is equally revealing in what it conceals. It was conducted in January when the dirt roads are frozen solid and no one ventures out on horseback because the wind off the hills will flay the skin from your face. Karen McGraw observed: “Since January is not representative of road conditions in the spring or after rains, does the Town recognize that there can be deep ruts that grab the wheels of your car, scrape the bottom of a low riding car, potholes that develop quickly in vulnerable areas and corrugated sections that develop?” A traffic study conducted in January for a venue operating May through October is not analysis. It is the paperwork equivalent of a fake Rolex—superficially plausible until you look closely and notice the second hand doesn’t sweep.

What the neighbors do know—what they have already lived through—is the noise. The sound carries. Mercer Warriner and George Lewis noted that “the noise from a recent party there carried over the hills and fields all the way to our property on Route 66, which is about 2 miles away as the crow flies.” Heather Uhlar explained the physics: “The property, owned by the Williams family, is located at the top of a large hill, overlooking the homes and farms in the valley below. When large gatherings occur at a location such as this, the sound travels down into the lower surrounding properties. It essentially creates a megaphone effect.” The Williamses have, in effect, purchased nature’s own amplification system and are proposing to rent it out for weddings.

The safety concerns are equally concrete. Norman Levine: “This neighborhood is well known as horse country. Residents and visitors often ride and fox hunt along these dirt roads. Introducing alcohol tastings and large gatherings increases the risk of accidents, including drunk or speeding drivers hitting horseback riders or pedestrians. Bashford has no sidewalks, no posted speed limit, and no centerline.” He submitted a quantitative risk analysis using Monte Carlo simulation: “The data indicates an 18% annual chance of at least one serious traffic accident if the winery proposal remains unchanged. To put this into perspective, over a typical 5-year period, there’s a 64% chance of at least one serious accident happening. Over 10 years, this likelihood rises to nearly 85%.” His comparison: “You wouldn’t board a plane with an 18% annual crash rate. You wouldn’t live in a house with an 18% yearly fire risk.” Approve this application, and you are essentially scheduling the tragedy. The only question is which year it arrives.

The legal arguments are equally devastating. One fundamental problem: the Williams property is not located in a certified agricultural district—a fact the town’s own Building Department Inspector Kent Pratt “was unaware” of when making his decision. Kathleen Tylutki of the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets confirmed that “in order for a farm operation to be protected under Agriculture and Markets Law 305-a, they would need to be in a county, State certified agricultural district.” The Williamses are not. Their entire agricultural defense collapses on this single fact.

Even if they were in an agricultural district, the production numbers doom them: “The fact that the application states that the entire farm hopes to produce 300 bottles of wine in 2026 and 2027 dictates that it would be impossible for the operation to meet the required 70/30% revenue ratio if any weddings were held.” Three hundred bottles. To support a commercial tasting operation and event venue. This is not viticulture; it is fiction.

Martha Coultrap and Harvey Bagg dissected the timeline: “The owners represented that they produced 150 bottles of wine from their 400 plants in 2024 and will do the same in 2025. It is not clear when that wine will be drinkable. Because grapevines must be at least three years old before they are mature enough for the grapes to be harvested for wine, if, as the owners assert, an additional 400 plants are planted in 2026 and 2027, those plants will not be mature enough for wine making until 2029 and 2030 and not drinkable for at least one or more years thereafter.” One hundred fifty bottles. That is roughly twelve cases. A robust dinner party could go through that in an evening. This is not a vineyard. This is a wine-themed Instagram backdrop with agricultural pretensions.

Kate Butler drew the contrast with genuine operations like the Chatham Berry Farm and Greenhouse Cidery—“local and properly located,” “a community center, not an outsider for rent venue,” “a true extension of a preexisting legitimate agricultural business.” She concluded: “Loud, disruptive event venues have no place in residential rural areas, particularly those with dirt roads intended for low volume local traffic. Isn’t this why we have zoning?”

The Chatham Dirt Road Coalition warned: “Ultimately this whole commercial enterprise, with its parties, wine tastings, weddings etc. will set a precedent for similar enterprises on our rural dirt roads and in the process open a Pandora’s Box of acrimony and ill will in our bucolic town.” Not a single member of the community is on the record supporting the Williams’ plan.

And here we arrive at the psychology of the thing. What kind of people persist for half a decade against this wall of opposition? What does it take to face your neighbors at the Old Chatham Country Store, the Malden Bridge Post Office, knowing they have hired lawyers to stop you, knowing they have submitted actuarial analyses quantifying the likelihood of tragedy, knowing that not a single letter of support exists? Imagine the hubris—pursuing an unnecessary, ego-driven vanity project that will change a community forever, and just not caring.

Nerve. That’s what it takes.

Regina Wenzek noted: “The Williams don’t live at that house. They will be the only ones spared the noise of these parties.” I should qualify this statement. The Williamses do live there—but not in the summers. They have the Lake George pad to retreat to when the bridesmaids start their karaoke performance five wines into a dark summer night.

I know Ed. We both worked in healthcare. I was running a large medical practice that included an ENT practice—Ed is an ENT trained in facial plastics with a practice nearby. We met when he proposed that our group use the operating rooms he owns in Latham, and we declined. He gave the hard sell anyway. That’s Ed. The hard sell. The assumption that resistance is simply insufficient persuasion. At that time, he had no idea that I was a native son of Columbia County. It was my mother who had a different last name and still lived in town who “outed” me. She and Ed attended the same small church.

But I would not say we were friends—friendly professionally, sure, but we never socialized, even after I moved back to Chatham. I might see him at a cocktail party and wave, but it would end there. I thought he was a little showy (the Tara-like house again), but nice.

It was during COVID that I saw a different side of Ed. I had taken a new position at Columbia University’s Healing Communities Study, working on the opioid epidemic (my work would later be published in the New England Journal of Medicine). When COVID shut everything down, I was still working, now dealing with two deadly diseases. The misinformation was everywhere, and there was not an academic or public health professional who was not challenged by both the actual disease and the conspiracy theories swirling around it.

It started like a lot of things started in the beginning of the pandemic—on Facebook. Ed was supporting the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine in a public discussion with my neighbors, and I was shocked. I ignored it. Then after two glasses of wine and a long day of watching people die, I weighed in.*

I said that what he was saying was dangerous.

He said he was a physician. Which was my point exactly. And I am not. His point exactly.

Never mind, however, that I’m a researcher who wrote a textbook on infectious diseases, never mind that I was funded by NIH—Ed was confident he knew better. He sent a DM saying he wanted to talk to me about it, but he never called, and I know why.

Because his position on hydroxychloroquine wasn’t based in science but in his politics. Once you understand that, the story of Fox Hill Estate & Vineyard begins to make sense: the insistence on being right in the face of evidence, the belief that rules apply to other people, the conviction that what he wants is what should happen regardless of what anyone else thinks.

You see this trait a lot in medicine, especially in my experience with surgeons. And what is this trait? A profound belief that their success in one domain was a function of their superiority rather than education, circumstance, luck and the labor of others. They start to think the skills they have in the OR are applicable to any craft—farming, check; vintner, check. And then this confidence morphs into the belief that they are omnipotent.

They stop hearing no. Every denial becomes a challenge to try again with a slightly different approach, because surely the problem is not the project. How could it be?

Everything is possible. Everything can be modified. Maybe that is the nature of a plastic surgeon. Agriculture can mean parties. A dirt road can become a commercial thoroughfare. Wetlands can be ignored. Environmental reviews can be skipped. If nature or the neighbors or the Planning Board says otherwise, you just need a better pitch, a revised application, another January traffic study.

Deborah Butler identified the species precisely: “Opportunistic people on the other hand thrive on chaos and confusion. They assume small rural towns are not smart enough, have the gumption or financial resources to say no.”

It tracks—all of it. The plan, the planners, and the large middle finger to their neighbors. And it’s not just Ed. Fox Hill Estate & Vineyard is a joint project, a shared delusion. Ed, the man who makes his living convincing people they need to be improved, sees land the way he sees a nose: raw material awaiting transformation, a before picture waiting for its after. Cherie, it seems from her online life, wants to create something the Kardashians would approve of—hosting gatherings where she can pour wine for guests who will admire the view from the hilltop and compliment the stone façade and pretend that what they’re drinking isn’t twelve cases of hobby wine.

Together, they have convinced themselves that what they want is reasonable, that the neighbors are being difficult, that persistence will eventually be rewarded. That the community objects, that the concerns are not address, that the Planning Board keeps asking for documents they haven’t provided, that twenty-plus letters in the file say no—none of it registers, because the shared vision is too intoxicating to abandon. They are prepared to keep coming back, like a hydra regenerating after each defeat, until they wear everyone down. Because for Ed and Cherie, this was never about wine. It is about being seen. And the thing about people who need to be seen is that they cannot imagine why anyone would choose to look away.

I think about Guilderland, where I also spent time growing up, and what happened to it starting in the 1940s. Stuyvesant Plaza was just farmland, Western Avenue was a country road. Now the farms have given way to malls and fast-food chains, to cheesy homes with fake Palladian windows and vinyl-sided chimneys. Every place that turns into Guilderland was once a Chatham. The transformation happens one approval at a time, one “scaled back” project at a time, one exhausted Planning Board at a time. It happens when people with money and persistence wear down people with jobs and families who cannot attend every meeting, cannot write every letter, cannot hire lawyers to match the lawyers on the other side.

Norman Levine warned: “Approving this project could set a harmful precedent by encouraging more commercial event spaces on unpaved residential roads. Other vineyards in Chatham, such as Sabba and Hudson-Chatham, are situated on paved main roads with infrastructure capable of handling visitor traffic. Bashford is not appropriate for this level of commercial use.”

This project is a nose job on the land where I grew up—an unnecessary cosmetic procedure imposed on a landscape that was fine the way it was, that didn’t ask to be improved, that was beautiful precisely because no one had tried to make it beautiful. It is being proposed by someone who has made a fortune convincing people that nature’s first draft is merely a suggestion, that dissatisfaction is a business opportunity, that everything can be fixed if you just find the right specialist.

It seems not to matter that literally no one is willing to publicly support this project. It seems not to matter that so many are opposed this project. A community put out because two rich people want to cosplay at being a Napa Valley destination.

The dirt roads remain unpaved, for now. Spencer’s Field is still there, even if the Spencer’s are long gone. The wetlands filter the water and hold the floods at bay, unassessed and unprotected, waiting to see if anyone will bother to map them before the parking lot goes in, before the chemicals start flowing downhill, before the aquifer starts to drop.

And the hydra keeps growing new heads. Five years and counting. The hydra has money. The hydra has time. The hydra cares only about the hydra.

I reached out to Ed Williams. Our exchange is included below.** On the land where the vineyard is located, there are no cattle. On the parcel of land that he owns where the cattle reside, there is a sign requesting people in the event of an emergency to call Donal Collins—who is a farmer and my understanding is that Dr. Williams leases this land to him. But they are two different properties. The Fox Hill Vineyard is not farm land. It is residental.

Dr. Williams did in fact attend Cornell, but according to his own podcast (you can find it here), he did not study farming, but physiology and chemistry.

I’ve included references on wine growing and pesticides. My research does not support his position.

I do support his position on land conservancy, but not this way. There is an avenue to preserve Columbia County. The Columbia Land Conservancy has been working on this project for many years. They offer tax benefits to landowners and steward the land.

The financial benefits of “eco-tourism” are controversial. They are not always a plus. In this case it is hard to see the benefit. A wine tasting facility and the taxes it brings do not go to local municipalities - sales tax goes to the state. The benefit would be employment. More traffic means more work for the town. More work means more revenue needs to be spent.

Dr. Williams speaks to his experience in regulatory compliance. We share this skill. In healthcare - that expertise is very different than agriculute. The expertise employed in healthcare regulatory compliance is not expertise in land and agricultural regulatory law.

I admire hardworking people. Ed Williams is a hardworking man - no doubt. Getting up in the morning before school and attending to livestock is not easy. I know - I’ve done it to.

But working on a farm does not mean one is a farmer.

When I was in graduate school, studying public health, I studied and worked on “superfunds.” Nassau Lake is one. Right up the road. His postion around wetlands needs more oversight.

While the town believes that the end goal is 800 vines, in Ed’s letter to me, it is now 5,000.

There are no business endeavors on Bashford Road.

You can also review all the documents, including public comments by clicking here.

*On March 28, 2020, the FDA granted an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) that allowed chloroquine an FDAd hydroxychloroquine from the Strategic National Stockpile to be used to treat certain hospitalized patients with COVID-19 when a clinical trial was unavailable.

However, the FDA revoked that emergency use authorization after determining that chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine are unlikely to be effective in treating COVID-19. Additionally, in light of ongoing serious cardiac adverse events and other potential serious side effects, the known and potential benefits no longer outweighed the known and potential risks. FDA

Multiple studies provide data that hydroxychloroquine does not provide a medical benefit for hospitalized patients with COVID-19. Drugs.com The World Health Organization and the U.S. National Institutes of Health have also stopped studies evaluating hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 due to a lack of benefit. Current NIH and US treatment guidelines do not recommend use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for COVID-19 treatment.

According to the Mayo Clinic, hydroxychloroquine does not treat COVID-19 or prevent infection with the virus that causes COVID-19. Mayo Clinic

It’s worth noting that hydroxychloroquine is FDA-approved to treat or prevent malaria, and to treat autoimmune conditions such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. FDA has determined that these drugs are safe and effective when used for these diseases in accordance with their FDA-approved labeling. FDA The revocation only applied to the COVID-19 use.

**Dear Ed,

I am currently preparing an article for Substack and NewsBreak regarding your and Cheri’s proposed winery and tasting room project, as well as the community response it has generated. In the interest of balanced journalism, I would like to offer you the opportunity to share your perspective on this matter. Should you wish to respond to the following questions, I will ensure your comments are included in the article.

1. What is your long-term vision for this project? Do you anticipate expanding the vineyard operations? If so, does your business plan include projected crop yield increases for years three through five?

2. What are your projections for visitor traffic to the vineyard and tasting room over the same timeframe?

3. When will the town and neighboring residents receive detailed specifications not currently included in the application, such as building dimensions and parking capacity?

4. When will a DEC environmental assessment report regarding the designated wetlands be made available?

5. Public records indicate plans to use portable sanitation facilities. Could you provide details on the maintenance schedule for these units, particularly as it relates to service vehicle traffic?

6. My research indicates that northeastern grape cultivation typically requires chemical intervention to prevent endemic fungal issues. Specifically, compounds such as Mancozeb, Captan, Azoxystrobin, Tebuconazole, and Imidacloprid are widely considered essential by eastern grape growers. Will you be utilizing these or similar pesticides?

7. Have you explored organic cultivation methods as an alternative?

8. What are your plans for irrigation?

9. How do you respond to the concerns expressed by community members who oppose this project?

10. What measures, if any, are you considering to address concerns regarding noise and increased traffic?

I welcome the opportunity to discuss these matters by phone, or you may respond via email at your convenience.

Sincerely,

Josh Powell

(518)### ####

And the response:

Good morning Joshua,

I’m not sure which email you had on file, but this is my current and preferred address. I wanted to take a moment to answer a few of the questions regarding our vineyard, and also provide some context for those who do not know Cherie and me personally.

Although our winery project is relatively new, we are certainly not new to this area or to agriculture. I grew up in a rural farming community and worked on a dairy farm for over ten years through college and medical school. As an undergraduate I attended and graduated from the Agricultural & Life Sciences School at Cornell, so farming has always been in my blood. Cherrie and I moved to this area almost 30 years ago, raised our four children here, and have been actively involved in the community—our church, the Old Chatham Hunt Club, and various local efforts.

In recent years, as I’ve had a bit more time, we decided to pursue additional agricultural endeavors. We’ve had beef cattle on our property for about 15 years, and we are now expanding into viticulture. We currently have 400 grapevines planted, with a long-term vision of growing to approximately 5,000 vines. Our goal is to produce a premium New York State wine and support the agricultural community, especially given the development pressures we are all witnessing in the area. Preserving farmland is important to us, and this project allows us to contribute meaningfully to that mission.

Our site is an ideal east-facing slope with Manlius-Channery soils, and we’ve done extensive research in collaboration with Cornell Cooperative Extension to ensure correct placement of crops and grape varieties suited to our microclimate here in Columbia County. While much of this is informed by data and agricultural science, some of it will naturally involve experimentation—common to all new vineyards in the Northeast.

With regard to compliance, this is an area I am extremely familiar with. I have founded, managed, and operated a fully accredited ambulatory surgery center and surgical practice more than 30 years, so compliance—state, federal, and regulatory—is something I navigate every single day. In comparison, agricultural and farm-winery regulations are very straightforward. We have engaged Crawford Engineering out of Hudson, along with legal counsel, to ensure we meet all requirements, including traffic and noise studies.

A few of the other concerns raised—such as irrigation or wetlands—are not particularly relevant for our site. Irrigation is generally unnecessary after the first year in the Northeast because our soils retain adequate moisture, unlike California vineyards. Our vineyard location is well outside any wetlands, situated on high ground, so that is a non-issue.

From a practical standpoint, I do not anticipate that a small farm winery and tasting room will create anywhere near the road impact compared to the daily FedEx, delivery trucks and heavy equipment that already service numerous businesses along our road. New York State is actively promoting agricultural development—including vineyards—in Long Island, the Finger Lakes, and right here in the Hudson Valley. Columbia County is part of that broader initiative to strengthen tourism and agriculture.

I’m not entirely sure why this has become controversial, as we are simply exercising our rights as long-standing farmers with deep roots in Columbia County. Our intention is to preserve open land, contribute to the local agricultural economy, and create something of quality that reflects well on the community.

I hope this helps clarify our goals and answer your questions.

Warm regards,

Ed

References

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Cornell University. (2024, August 23). EPA considers delisting mancozeb for use in grape. National Grape Research Alliance. https://graperesearch.org/2024/08/23/epa-considers-delisting-mancozeb-for-use-in-grape/

Gold, K. (2025, May 16). Update on mancozeb use in grapes. Purdue University Facts for Fancy Fruit. https://fff.hort.purdue.edu/article/update-on-mancozeb-use-in-grapes/

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Penn State Extension. (2024). Overview of EPA proposed cancellation of mancozeb in grape production. https://extension.psu.edu/overview-of-epa-proposed-cancellation-of-mancozeb-in-grape-production

Pires, S. M., Magalhães, M. J., & Oliveira, M. B. P. P. (2021). Systemic effects of the pesticide mancozeb: A literature review. Ciência & Saúde Coletiva, 26(6), 2231–2238. https://doi.org/10.1590/1413-81232021266.34162020

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