NYSBA SUMMER 2006 | VOL. 26 | NO. 3 The New York Environmental Lawyer A publication of the Environmental Law Section of the New York State Bar Association Message from the Chair I am honored, humbled Second Vice-Chair, Joan Leary Matthews, a professor at and a little nervous as I Albany Law School. Our current Treasurer and Secretary, move into the Chair’s chair. Alan Knauf and Barry Kogut, are both in private practice, Honored, because this fi gu- and will help keep Joan, Lou and me well grounded. rative chair has previously Under the revised Bylaws we adopted several years been occupied by some of the ago, the Section Cabinet includes the fi ve offi cers plus most distinguished environ- our Section’s representative to the Association’s House of mental lawyers in New York. Delegates, and a representative from the Section Council Humbled, because I recognize (made up of all past Chairs). I’m very pleased to be work- how much there is about New ing with Phil Dixon, our very able and diligent House York State environmental law of Delegates rep; and Alice Kryzan, who has graciously that I don’t know. (I’ve worked agreed to serve as our Section Council rep for the coming my entire career for the federal year, and whose experience and good common sense will government, so I’m embar- be most helpful. rassingly ignorant about this central focus of our Section.) And nervous, because although the task seemed manage- The unusual circumstance that, for the next three able enough several years ago when I agreed to serve, it years, our Section will be chaired by attorneys not in looks considerably more demanding from close up. private practice is attributable to our predecessors’ dili- gent efforts to diversify the Section’s membership and, in If I’m counting correctly, I will be our Section’s twen- particular, its leadership. At present, about one-quarter ty-fi fth Chair. To the best of my knowledge, I’m the fi rst one to be working in government while serving in that ca- pacity. Quite a number of our past Chairs worked in gov- Inside ernment at some time before or after serving as a Section From the Editor ..................................................................................... 4 offi cer. My immediate predecessor and close friend Miriam Villani is one of them, having started her career as Letter from Alison H. Crocker, Acting General Counsel, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation .................... 6 a colleague at EPA. At least one of our past Chairs—Jim Sevinsky—was in government when he became an offi cer, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation but had moved to the private sector by the time he be- Adirondack Park Agency Order on Consent ............................... 9 came Chair. Lou Alexander, now our First Vice Chair, fol- Putting Wind Power on the Fast Track for Development ............. 21 lowed an opposite path. He was in private practice when (Michael Donohue) he fi rst became an offi cer, but soon thereafter moved into Enforcement of SEQRA Mitigaton Measures: government. Discussion and Case Studies ................................................... 32 (Thomas M. Tuori) We’ve been fortunate in the past to have highly re- spected members of academia as Section Chairs—Nick Administrative Decisions Update .................................................... 53 Robinson, Phil Weinberg and Bill Ginsberg (whose recent (Prepared by Thomas F. Puchner and Peter J. Van Bortel) death we all mourn). Following in their footsteps is our Recent Decisions in Environmental Law ......................................... 57 env-newsl-summer06.indd 1 9/19/2006 11:30:53 AM of the Section’s Executive Committee members are not in sibility.) The unanimous vote to adopt the policy belies private practice. I believe this diversity strengthens our the diffi cult and sometimes divisive issues that had to be organization and makes it more valuable to its members worked through. and to the wider community. It is important to remem- ber, as well, that among the remaining three-quarters of The question of whether and how the Section should Executive Committee members, their practices and work advocate has been discussed from time to time dur- settings are also widely diversifi ed—big fi rms, small ing our 25-year history. It was raised again by Maureen fi rms and solo practitioners, representing all kinds of dif- Leary at the April 2005 Executive Committee meeting. ferent clients from corporations to municipalities to local Maureen then prepared a white paper entitled “Educating environmental organizations. or Advocating,” which was distributed at the Fall 2005 Executive Committee meeting. A workgroup was formed It has not been easy to attract more members from the to develop a policy for the Section on this subject. The public sector or environmental groups. I had been in prac- workgroup members were: Dave Freeman, Maureen tice ten years before Phil Weinberg persuaded me to join Leary, Joan Leary Matthews, Rosemary Nichols, Dan the Bar Association (that was in 1985; you do the math). I Riesel and me. As is often the case, we fairly soon came was not at all certain that I would fi nd it useful or enjoy- to consensus on perhaps 95% of the contents of a draft able, but it has been both. Useful, because my ability to policy document, but the remaining few elements proved do my job has been enhanced by the opportunity to have quite diffi cult, with deep and principled differences of outside-the-offi ce interaction with a variety of smart and opinion. interesting attorneys whose career experiences differ from mine. (I fl atter myself that I’ve occasionally been able to Ultimately, we reached agreement on every out- return the favor by demystifying the sometimes obscure standing issue but one. At the January 2006 Executive ways of government thinking.) And enjoyable, because Committee meeting we presented our draft and fl agged environmental lawyers are—I am quite certain—more fun that one issue for discussion and further consideration. than other species of attorney. From Jim Periconi’s sing- The lone remaining issue had two components. First: alongs to a canoe trip through Constitution Marsh, from whether a proposal that the Section take an advocacy hiking in the Adirondacks to kayaking in Lake George position should require a super-majority (more than 50%- to riding the Alpine Slide at Jiminy Peak, I look back on plus-one) of the voting Executive Committee members; many years of fi ne camaraderie at the Section’s Fall meet- and second: if so, how large should the required super- ings. majority be—two-thirds? three-quarters? somewhere in between? Speaking of Fall meetings, our next one will be at the Otesaga Hotel in Cooperstown, October 13–15, 2006. The Advocacy Policy confi rms that we endeavor The subject of the CLE program will be Energy, with a to promote consideration of diverse views within the particular focus on some of the emerging legal and policy Section, and that we will seek consensus when possible. issues surrounding alternative energy development such Requiring a super-majority ensures that the Section won’t as wind power, coal gasifi cation, and LNG terminals. take a position with which a large minority of Executive The program is being organized by the Co-chairs of our Committee members disagree, but in a strict sense it is Section’s Energy Committee, Kevin Bernstein, Jennifer “anti-democratic.” I personally endorsed the idea for Hairie and Bill Helmer. The topic is a logical follow-up some of the same reasons that I have grudgingly come to to the Section’s extremely compelling program on global think that the U.S. Senate may be wise to require a two- warming at our January 2006 Annual Meeting. Please thirds majority to cut off a fi libuster. (When I was in my mark your calendars now for the October meeting—the formative years, the fi libuster was the tool of choice of timing should be excellent for viewing Fall colors in one the anti-civil rights crowd, and I considered it an outrage. of the prettiest parts of New York State. Lately it has been a tool used or contemplated by the other side of the political spectrum.) There are various Over the next year I expect to continue being engaged other ways in which our system of governance empowers with the important, but sometimes thorny, question of those who fi nd themselves, numerically, in the minority. when and how our Section should take formal positions An example is the fact that every state, no matter its size, on proposed legislation, regulations and agency guid- is represented by two Senators. ance. As a Section that has actively sought to increase the diversity of its membership, it is not surprising that there Just as these examples from the national arena have may sometimes be sharp differences among our members been controversial on the macro scale, so too, on the micro regarding any such proposal. A policy to guide us in this scale, was the proposal that our Section require a super- arena was developed over the past year and adopted at majority when taking an advocacy position. This issue the April 5, 2006, Executive Committee meeting. (It will was energetically debated at the January 2006 meeting, henceforth be known as the “Advocacy Policy” because with the range of opinions among the ExecCom members its full title is way too long, for which I take sole respon- being as wide, and the views as strongly held, as among the members of the workgroup that developed the draft. 2 NYSBA The New York Environmental Lawyer | Summer 2006 | Vol. 26 | No. 3 env-newsl-summer06.indd 2 9/19/2006 11:31:11 AM The issue was brought to a vote—actually, a series of jority provision.