{"id":191703,"date":"2026-04-10T03:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-10T03:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/191703\/"},"modified":"2026-04-10T03:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-10T03:07:10","slug":"judge-nixes-dec-rule-on-freshwater-wetland-definition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/191703\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge nixes DEC rule on &#8216;freshwater wetland&#8217; definition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A judge on Wednesday struck down a controversial regulation issued by the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation that was the subject of multiple lawsuits over what a \u201cfreshwater wetland\u201d is.<\/p>\n<p>The now invalidated rule would have expanded the definition of a \u201cfreshwater wetland\u201d and required state permits for certain activities on more public and privately-owned land.<\/p>\n<p>The DEC\u2019s regulation defined freshwater wetlands as lands and submerged lands, like marshes, swamps and bogs that support aquatic or semi-aquatic vegetation, critical to the health of the state&#8217;s natural environment. It\u2019s a modernization of New York\u2019s Freshwater Wetlands Act, first enacted in 1975.<\/p>\n<p>Business groups and landowners argued the rules would make it much harder to get new development projects off the ground like housing.<\/p>\n<p>Acting state Supreme Court Justice Richard Platkin ruled the DEC did not follow the proper procedure when making the regulation.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesman for the DEC said the department is reviewing the decision.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge on Wednesday struck down a controversial regulation issued by the New York state Department of Environmental&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191704,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[109,116,257,3242,9,11,10,49,51,50,12,112,87,380,27],"class_list":{"0":"post-191703","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-app-ny-state-of-politics","10":"tag-central-ny","11":"tag-environment","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-headlines","14":"tag-new-york-news","15":"tag-new-york-state","16":"tag-new-york-state-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-state-news","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-ny-state-of-politics","20":"tag-politics","21":"tag-spectrum-news-staff","22":"tag-top-stories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191703"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191703\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}