Friday, October 21, 2011
Special Meeting to Review Findings Statement
Council President Don Moore has scheduled a special Common Council meeting for Thursday, October 27, to discuss and vote on accepting the GEIS findings statement. Tom Casey has the story in today's Register-Star: "LWRP findings airing Thursday." Moore declined to explain the nature of the "snag" that prevented the document from being available for Tuesday's regular monthly meeting of the Council, saying "frankly I don’t know the magnitude of what this snag means." According to the article, Moore said that "members of the council will be given the statement by the end of the week to give them a chance to review the statement in advance before voting." The findings statement, as Gossips reported almost as soon as it happened, appeared on the City of Hudson website yesterday.
'1. How is SEQR enforced?
ReplyDelete'The SEQR statute (Article 8 of the NYS Environmental Conservation Law) did not provide DEC, or any other agency, with administrative or enforcement authority to review SEQR implementation or decisions by other agencies. DEC is charged with administration of SEQR, including promulgation of statewide regulations and model assessment forms pertaining to SEQR, but cannot force another agency to comply with SEQR. Therefore, actual oversight and enforcement of SEQR falls to interested citizens and groups.
'To enable citizens to monitor and provide input to SEQR proceedings, specific notices and public comment periods are required at certain steps, primarily during the scoping and review of environmental impact statements (EISs). The only mechanism by which SEQR decisions can be challenged is through a court proceeding, governed by Article 78 of the New York State Civil Practice Law and Rules (CPLR), brought in a NYS Supreme Court.'
'The SEQR Handbook,' pp. 169, 170.
http://www.dec.ny.gov/docs/permits_ej_operations_pdf/seqrhandbook.pdf