Local Government Backlash Regarding DEP Agreement

JEWETT - The proposed backtracking on a Department of Environmental Protection agreement to backoff from buying certain lands within the watershed continues to be met with local government backlash.

Town of Jewett government leaders, at a recent meeting, voted to join the mounting resistance to a followup request from DEP for an exception to their previous promise.

Jewett officials unanimously approved a resolution supporting Delaware County’s opposition to an appeal from DEP that would let them accept town-initiated core land offerings.

DEP, in November 2023, announced they would stop obtaining large tracts of property in Priority Areas 3 & 4 in the West of Hudson Watershed.

Their decision was met with jubilation by officials in Greene, Delaware and Schoharie counties who, for years, have been pushing for the New York City agency to take a step back on its acquisitions.

DEP was in the business of procuring acreage in response to a federal mandate aimed at preserving the water quality of its reservoir network which includes multiple West of Hudson counties and communities.

Given the option of building a billion dollar filtration system, DEP has spent millions in securing 220 square miles of Catskills real estate.

Many watershed citizens and officials never had a warm and cozy feeling about the increased DEP presence. Any land bought by the Big Apple is henceforth forever green, not available for any development.

Jewett, in passing the resolution, partners with the neighboring towns of Windham and Ashland, among many others.

“We’re trying not to leave the door open for continued DEP purchases,” Jewett town supervisor Greg Kroyer said, following the board’s action.

The resolution states, in part, that in December, 2022, the New York State Department of Health released a revised 2017 Filtration Avoidance Determination (FAD) related to the DEP land program.

That document acknowledged comments from a list of West of Hudson communities echoing well-established concerns that DEP’s unlimited purchasing would ultimately squelch necessary and positive growth.

“NYSDOH agrees that strategic, well-reasoned acquisition of water quality protective parcels should be the focus” of the DEP land acquisition program, the resolution states.

This should be done while, “allowing future community growth to occur in a manner that is consistent with the existing character and planning goals of each of the Watershed communities,” the resolution states.

“The City of New York has agreed to limit core land acquisition West of

Hudson by ceasing solicitation and new core land acquisition in Priority Areas 3 and 4,” the resolution states.

“At a meeting on November 19, 2024, the City of New York asked if the communities would support the following exception.”

Under the exception, “the City could continue to acquire land in Priority Areas 3 and 4 if a request was initiated by the municipality where the subject property is located,” the resolution states.

“One or more [Delaware County communities] requested time to consider the proposal,” the resolution states, further noting objections to the exception for the following reasons:

—“The exception opens the door for continued large parcel acquisition in Priority Areas 3 and 4, which last in perpetuity and are in direct contrast to the goals of supporting the dual mission of the Watershed Memorandum of Agreement (MOA).”

—“The exception would provide a means for landowners who want to sell to the City (rather than putting their lands up for sale on a more traditional competitive real estate market) to exert pressure on local town or boards to approve the conveyance.

“As a practical matter, this creates the potential, for landowners to pressure local boards to allow such sales which benefit the individual property

owner at the expense of the overall community,” the resolution states. 

“Ultimately, it has the potential to create havoc, bad feelings and lawsuits, not unlike those our communities faced as large landowners objected to their lands being placed in extension areas in 2010,” the resolution states.

—“The exception is not necessary as there are many other land preservation programs and options that have been developed and are available to municipalities that are interested in acquiring land for open

space preservation or other purposes,” the resolution states.

“Additional, large parcel land acquisition in these regions has little to no science-based support for water quality protection in comparison,” the resolution states.

The fuel was lit for fighting DEP in the aftermath of a report in the news magazine, Delaware Currents, pointing out that DEP, in 1997, “rolled out the [land buying] program.”

“A lot has changed,” since then, the magazine states, in particular, “when the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine conducted a full review of the watershed protection program.

The study, “revealed that approaches like stream bank protection work and riparian buffer plantings could be more useful in protecting the city’s water than land acquisition,” the magazine report states.