Manifest Destiny, Kiryas Yoel style

Times Herald-Record :

One side argues that building multi-family housing in this town's bucolic western reaches would be an aesthetic and environmental disaster, destroying views and rural charm while threatening groundwater quality.
The other side contends that efforts to control development in the Highland Mills area would discriminate against Hasidic Jews and contradict the town's own stated desire for more affordable housing.
The two arguments stem from Woodbury's proposed master plan, which is providing a sort of dress rehearsal for a likely battle between the town and neighboring Kiryas Joel for control of stretches of undeveloped land in Woodbury.
The plan itself prominently discusses the prospect of Kiryas Joel expanding and sketches several reasons Woodbury would oppose the spread of housing as dense as 20 condominiums per acre.
"The adverse environmental impacts that would be associated with the Kiryas Joel approach' to development within Woodbury are likely to be significant," reads an opening paragraph...
The arguments offer a glimpse of what the lawyers will be saying if and when Kiryas Joel and Woodbury wage a court battle for control of hundreds of acres of Hasidic-owned land in Woodbury, including ACE Farm.
One Kiryas Joel group petitioned last year to annex 88 acres of Woodbury land into Kiryas Joel and later withdrew the request.
But another attempt to bring Woodbury land under Kiryas Joel's control - through annexation or another method - is almost inevitable, because Woodbury's 2-acre zoning would never accommodate anything close to the Hasidic community's typically dense housing...