June 24, 2004

Press Conference
11:00 AM, Little Britain Grange

Presentation and Press Release

I would like to welcome all of you to our press conference today, sponsored by SPARC, the Sierra Club and the Orange County Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs. Our last press conference was held in this historic Grange building in October of 2002, when we announced that we would move forward and appeal the unfavorable decision handed down that September.

Our first accomplishment was a ruling from the Court last November placing the highway project under an injunction, pending our appeal. The defendant agencies, NYS DOT, the Thruway, and the FWHA, tried several times to have the stay removed, but they failed.
The next milestone was the hearing itself in April of 2003, and the defendants anxiously expected a decision to be issued almost immediately. They were proved wrong and eight months later, on December 12th, the decision was announced. To our delight and their dismay, we won the major point we had based our appeal on, section 4(f) of the Transportation Law.
This gave the lands west of Drury Lane a new status, they are to be regarded as parklands, and it is required that the highway project be reevaluated in terms of its impacts on these parklands.
The defendants were disturbed, and incredulous. They requested that the Court of Appeals rehear the appeal. This was denied.
Then the agencies decided to do their 4 (f) review, and they have. Yesterday we received confirmation that a motion had been entered in the federal district court, Northern District, to have the injunction on the highway project lifted, and the '4 (f)' review was included in the filing as an exhibit.


Problems with 4 (f) Review

Overall, it seems that the agencies have only 'tweaked' the interchange and road plan, and it's essentially an unchanged proposal. Is this the best the state and feds have to offer? We hope not. Does this document fulfill the requirements of 4 (f). No, we believe it doesn't.

What does the statute governing the review require? Among other things, it says that the Transportation Secretary may approve a project, requiring the use of publicly owned land "of a public park, recreation area, or wildlife and waterfowl refuge of national, State or local significance…only if…there is no prudent and feasible alternative to using that land…."

Regarding this, the defendants' 4 (f) review does not consider alternative routes whatsoever, even though they were considered in the original Environmental Impact Studies. These included routes that used local roads or the Thruway.

Another quote from the statute: . . . "project includes all possible planning to minimize harm to the park, recreation area, wildlife and waterfowl refuge."

But the agencies have not made any alterations whatsoever to the route of the connector road that would go between Drury Lane and C street. This is, as before, a planned four-lane highway crossing the current narrow causeway at Crestview Lake and requiring the filling of two acres of open water. We are looking at impacts on water quality, and other impacts that affect the quality of the recreation area---for swimming and fishing.

There would indeed be additional impacts on the buffer lands. Indispensible for this connector road would be the creation of a 13 acre wetland mitigation site on Barron Road, an internal roadway on the Buffer lands several miles from the project, a major alteration in the landscape that would eliminate existing necessary field habitat. The reason for the mitigation is the filling of wetlands needed to build the connector road.

Regarding 'sins of omission', the review makes no reference to the intended goal of spurring commercial development on the west side of Drury Lane. This is obviously harmful to the parklands, in fact it would destroy them as such. One of the stated goals of the project is the development of lands on both sides of Drury Lane, which was mentioned by County Executive Ed Diana as a meeting only several days ago. The plan is that this new interchange would encourage and facilitate these developments, especially warehouses and other cargo related development.

Moving Forward

SPARC and co-plaintiffs Sierra Club and the O.C. Federation of Sportsmen are determined that the defendant agencies, the NYS DOT, the NYS Thruway, and the Federal Highway Administration, redo their current document and deal, for example, with issues mentioned above, issues which should be addressed to fulfill the statute.

Our attorney John Caffry of Glens Falls will be responding to the agencies' submission with the input of our expert consultant, Steve Gross of Hudson Highlands Environmental Consulting. Our responsive papers will be filed later this summer. This will be followed by an additional response from the defendants.
All of these documents are going before Judge Randolph Treece of the Northern District of the federal court in Albany, N.Y. Probably in the early fall the judge will decide on this matter.

We are indeed at a most crucial point in our efforts to save the Stewart Buffer Lands for the public benefit, an effort that began in 1987 by SPARC founder Ben Kissam.

Contacts: Jim Mays, Sierra Club, 845 657-2013
Sandra Kisssam, SPARC, 845 564-3018
Rudy Vallet, O.C. Federation of Sportsmen's Clubs, 845 294