The Adirondack Park Agency’s permit practices have drifted too far from what the 1973 Agency Act, and the State Environmental Quality Review Act require.
The State Environmental Quality Review Act or (SEQR), requires any State or local authority that approves, funds, or undertakes a project, to evaluate the potential and actual environmental effects of the project before taking any final actions. SEQRA clearly outlines the state’s policy to ensure that any adverse environmental effects of proposed actions are fully considered and minimized or avoided.
An agency must identify any environmental concerns that are relevant to the project and take a close look at them. Then, it must provide a reasoned explanation for its determination of whether the action may have a significant adverse affect on the environment. If the proposed action could have significant environmental impacts, the agency must request an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS).
APA Review is no more the Equivalent of an EIS
APA is exempted by the requirement to prepare an EIS in its review of major project proposals. This is because the Legislature believed, in 1973, that APA would be conducting a similar environmental review. The State Legislature assumed that APA Act review would be equivalent to an EIS under SEQR, and therefore it was unnecessary to have proposed projects subjected to both laws. This assumption is no more valid.
The APA Act has been implemented less rigorously and comprehensively than the SEQRA requirements over the past decade. Because of this, many projects in Adirondack Park are now less subject to environmental scrutiny than similar projects elsewhere in the state. This undermines the Parks’ heightened protection.
Below is a simplified tableau that illustrates how the current APA Project Review differs from SEQR.
| Steps for Environmental Review | SEQR | APA |
| Environmental Assessment Required | Yes | Yes |
| What is the Environmental Impact Assessment? | Yes | Yes |
| Are EISs required for Impacts that are significant? | Yes | No |
| If an impact is deemed significant, how are the impacts assessed in public? | Yes | No. No. |
| Public hearings held? | Yes | Rarely. None in more than 10 years. |
| Are there other ways to develop that have less or more impacts? | Yes | Sometimes, not always. |
No More Findings Of FactAPA staff with the consent of the full Agency have substituted a in recent years Permit Writing FormFor a substantive permit orderFindings of Fact A quick review of agency permits in the past shows that From 2015 to 2019, all major permits issued by APA included findings of fact. Agency permits have been exempted from finding of fact for several years, even this winter. The Permit Writing Form has been created to simplify the permit findings. They are now separated from the permit. That form reduces the project history, background, site description, and all review of pertinent development considerations – from water resources, to wetlands, to wildlife habitats, to project impacts. – to a series of binary choices, meaning Yes/No check off boxes with occasional, highly abbreviated staff comments in small typeface.
Instead of reading the permit, staff are given a separate list with checked boxes. These check offs could be used to indicate that there is nothing substantial to see, no major effects, and no cause to concern.
A permit condition must be tied to an identified impact. The major permits issued by APA have not been linked to any impacts since 2020. It is impossible to determine if the permit conditions are adequate to address project impacts. The permit also does not reflect how development considerations were applied to make a determination of no undue detrimental impact. APA members are the decision makers and must judge the legality or efficacy permit conditions for major project when the nexus of conditions and the harm they seek is broken.
Take this example: Agency watchdogs may compare the 2017 Barile Family subdivision permit in North Elba issued to APA and the Woodward Lake subdivision permit issued by the agency in 2021. The 2017 Barile permit included substantive Findings of Fact that dealt with site conditions, application of development considerations, project impact avoidance, design and layout of new housing, and preserving ecological connectivity on and offline.
The 2021 Woodward Lake permit, however, is not subject to Findings of Fact. It contains permit conditions with no direct, analytical, rational relation to the agency staff’s two-year list of actual or projected impacts such as wildlife movements, ecological connectivity, and parcelization of upland forest. Agency staff concerns about project impacts and issues are covered by switching from a long findings statement to an easier yes/no form.
Transparency?Governor Kathy Hochul demands transparency in state government. When APA’s project impacts and findings are obscured and separated from the permits it issues, that is not good government transparency. It is high-time that the Ray Brook APA team once again explains the Findings of Facts as well as the Project Impacts within the permit documents. Not in a separate, opaque binary, yes/no form. Then, APA members are able to properly judge if they can legally reach a conclusion that there is no undue detrimental impact on the resources of Adirondack Park.
Photo at top: Author at a public comment period at APA, pre-COVID-19
