The Lloyd Town Board voted unanimously last week to add a definition of “heavy industry” to the town code, a measure officials said is meant to guide — not restrict — future development.

Supervisor Stu Weiss said the board spent months weighing the distinction between heavy and light in-dustry before settling on the new language.

“Over the past four months I’ve pondered heavy versus light industry,” Weiss said. “What has taken so long in making this determination is that there’s a large gray area to the matters of scale, not necessarily use. Tonight, we’re only dealing with the definition of heavy industry.”

Weiss said the new definition does not bar any specific project outright.

“It does not prohibit any particular project but rather offers guidance,” he said. “It is up to the planning and zoning boards to determine the project’s scope and scale, external impact, emissions and infrastructure needs.”

In a follow-up interview, Weiss said the new definition would not affect a cement batch plant proposed by Luke Clemente for Route 9W.

“He is not sure what he is going to do, perhaps a European-style plant that is all inside,” Weiss said, “but that’s going to be up to him and his attorney on whether they want to proceed or not.”

Weiss said the project’s classification depends on its scale. He said if Clemente “wanted to do a small-scale plant that is all within one building, the impacts are therefore negligible ... and I don’t think that we can prevent that. I don’t know what he is going to do with zoning and planning at this point.”

Nearby residents have told the Planning Board in writing that comparable plants of similar size and scale elsewhere are typically classified as heavy industry. Weiss disputed that characterization.

“Well yeah, but again when you circle back, is it really heavy industry?” he said.

Clemente has said he met with “town officials” in 2025 and again in early 2026 and was told his project met the town code’s definition of light industry. He purchased the 4.8-acre parcel on July 14, 2025, for $450,000, according to Clemente. When Councilman Mike Petty asked which town officials he had met with, Clemente named Patti Brooks — a local land surveyor who does not hold a town position. He did not identify anyone else.

Weiss said he does not believe Clemente’s project falls under the new heavy industry definition because the parcel sits in a light industry zone and the plant has been proposed as fully enclosed. He said it is im-portant for Building Inspector Dave Barton and the Town Board to review a complete project plan before making a determination.

“I just spoke to (Building Inspector) Dave Barton and said when these determinations are getting made, it’s gotta be a three-board thing — Planning and Zoning and, to some extent, the Town Board — to decide if it’s going to be heavy or light industry, instead of one guy that makes a determination and we’re all jerking around, second-guessing each other,” Weiss said. “So when a project comes in, there should be a determination meeting and go from there, otherwise everyone is wasting their time. There has got to be a better flow chart on how a gray-area project gets handled, and something like this is not a clear-cut thing.”

Weiss said future determinations should be made collectively and documented in writing when an application is submitted, “and that it be done by a group and not by one dude they’re going to yell at.”

Planning Board attorney Dave Gordon said last week that Clemente had gone before the Zoning Board seeking a variance allowing the building to reach 60 feet, exceeding the town code’s 45-foot limit. Gordon noted that one of the plant’s silos would protrude above the enclosed portion of the structure.

Weiss acknowledged that Barton’s determination classifying the Clemente project as light industry is currently being challenged by a resident before the Zoning Board of Appeals. A public hearing on the appeal is scheduled for Sept. 10 at 7 p.m. at Town Hall, 12 Church St., in Highland.