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The Catskill Watershed Coalition building in Arkville in the Catskill Mountains, the site of years of negotiations between stakeholders in the region over New York City lands in the mountain formation. Environmental groups were excluded from the final round of negotiations, and are dismayed over the final agreement.<\/p>\n
Roger Hannigan Gilson \/ Times Union<\/p>\n
ARKVILLE\u00a0\u2014 On Nov. 25, members of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection and Delaware County leaders gathered in the western Catskills after four years of negotiations to sign a landmark agreement<\/a> laying out how the city purchased land in the Catskills.<\/p>\n Since 1997, the DEP has purchased more than 220 square miles of land in the Catskills under a plan with the state that allowed the city to continue drawing water from its reservoirs in the region without installing a filtration system, which would cost billions of dollars. The agreement requires the city to purchase land in the watershed to buffer the reservoirs from runoff, which could introduce pollutants into a system that supplies water to 90% of New York City and approximately 1 million people in the Hudson Valley.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Catskills town leaders often chafed under the agreement, saying it<\/a> limited economic growth and usurped local political control. But after years of negotiations for a new agreement, Delaware County got most of what it wanted, including the ending of the city\u2019s major land-buying program in most of the Catskills. County leaders ratified the new agreement in November, and the Coalition of Watershed Towns, composed of local town leaders, signed it on Dec. 15.<\/p>\n However, not all the parties that were part of the negotiations are happy. But their approval wasn\u2019t needed for the agreement to go through.<\/p>\n Three environmental groups\u00a0\u2014 Riverkeeper, the National Resource Defense Council, and the Catskill Center\u00a0\u2014 were excluded from the final round of talks, which began in October.<\/p>\n Make the Times Union a Preferred Source on Google to see more of our journalism when you search.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cPublic health and environmental interests weren\u2019t fully present at the table, and that has frayed the 30-year upstate-downstate watershed partnership,\u201d NRDC senior attorney Eric Goldstein said, adding the agreement \u201cdownplays the importance of fragile ecosystems\u201d in the Catskills\u00a0and the health of the reservoir system.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The environmental groups took issue with modifications to a land-buying program, and some spoke of their anxiety about the agreement allowing some mining and energy development in the wild mountain formation.\u00a0<\/p>\n At issue is the Streamside Acquisition Program, which focuses on small, targeted purchases along creeks running into the reservoirs. It allows for much smaller land purchases than the previous arrangement, which allowed the city to buy large chunks of land<\/a> throughout the Catskills and was officially ended with the new agreement.<\/p>\n Though the Streamside Acquisition Program was expanded from the northeastern Catskills to the entire watershed, it was \u201cweakened to the point of insignificance\u201d in the new agreement,\u00a0Goldstein said. Riverkeeper Legal Program Director Mike Long said the program had \u201cbeen gutted.\u201d<\/p>\n ]Before the new agreement, the Catskill Center used science-based methods to identify parcels before soliciting landowners on behalf of the DEP. But the new agreement introduces working groups that must vote on a purchase before a landowner is even solicited, groups that include local town leaders\u00a0\u2014 who have opposed many land purchases\u00a0\u2014 and county-based conservation districts, among others.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The Catskill Center is included in these working groups, according to the agreement\u00a0\u2014 as a nonvoting member.<\/p>\n \u201cWe would be there to facilitate the process, as opposed to engage in the process,\u201d Catskill Center Executive Director Jeff Senterman said.<\/p>\n The program will use both purchases and licenses to protect land, according to\u00a0DEP spokesman John Milgrim. The DEP would pay residents\u00a0to preserve their land in some way under the licenses, something\u00a0Catskills leaders proposed in an April 2023 plan<\/a>.<\/p>\n Jeff Baker, the attorney for the Coalition of Watershed Towns, reached out after the online publication of this article, claiming the environmental groups had been on board with many of the items they now took issue with before negotiations were broken off. He said the only\u00a0\u201csubstantive change\u201d made to the Streamside Acquisition Program after the break in negotiations was to make clear that the Catskill Center \u201ccould participate and could propose a project, but does not have approval\/veto authority.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Granting the Catskill Center this power was a nonstarter, as it would give the organization \u201cauthority equal to an elected governmental entity,\u201d Baker wrote.<\/p>\n The environmental groups also took issue with the way the DEP\u2019s land will be used.<\/p>\n Current and future conservation easements were modified as part of the new agreement. Now permitted is \u201cthe extraction of sand, stone, soil, and gravel,\u201d according to the agreement.\u00a0It appears to only allow small areas of mining, with the materials used onsite for \u201cmaintenance and construction of access roads, and parking areas,\u201d or offsite for \u201cpurposes of water quality protection in any area of the watershed,\u201d and any mining would need to get normal state approvals. But Goldstein wondered \u201cif that\u2019s an appropriate use\u201d of the land in the region.<\/p>\n The agreement also allows utility infrastructure, \u201cincluding water, sewer, electrical, telecommunication and broadband lines and telecommunications tower structures.\u201d\u00a0Mike Dulong, the legal director at Riverkeeper, said the organization had long approved of cell towers in the region, which still has large areas with no service, as well as the ability to run utility lines.\u00a0But the agreement also allows renewable energy infrastructure. Dulong said this could mean solar fields and battery energy storage systems<\/a>, which often cover many acres and can\u00a0cause fires<\/a>, as well as wind energy in the future.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Baker wrote that any opposition to the conservation easements was new.<\/p>\n \u201cAll the parties agreed to the changes in the conservation easement that permitted limited activities on the affected lands, including the mining and renewable energy language,\u201d according to Baker. \u201cThere was no change in that language leading up to the final agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n Goldstein said the agreement was Delaware County\u2019s \u201cdream draft.\u201d The county had been the loudest opposition<\/a> to land purchases and opted out of participating in the Streamside Acquisition Program altogether in the new agreement.\u00a0The DEP will also pay all of Delaware County\u2019s and the Coalition of Watershed Towns\u2019 attorney fees incurred negotiating\u00a0\u2014 and often, outright opposing\u00a0\u2014 land-buying programs over the last three years. The cost would be footed by DEP ratepayers, which Goldstein called a \u201clittle bit of a sweetheart deal.\u201d<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The agreement\u00a0\u2014 informally called \u201cthe bridge agreement\u201d\u00a0\u2014 seeks to continue the DEP\u2019s programs in the Catskills until a longer-term pact due at the end of 2027. The DEP has convened a panel of scientists to study how climate change could impact the reservoir system to inform this agreement. The agency is also planning to assemble a \u201cNYC Watershed Protection Environmental Advisory Workgroup,\u201d according to Milgrim. Coalition of Watershed Towns Chair Ric Coombs said last month<\/a> the group could create its own expert panel.<\/p>\n Senterman said he hoped with a new New York City mayor in 2026, \u201cthere\u2019s a realization of the value of truly collaborating with everyone and bringing back that spirit that we had before this past summer, when DEP just walked away from the negotiations.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Catskill Watershed Coalition building in Arkville in the Catskill Mountains, the site of years of negotiations between…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[3684,29430,3242,611,612,844,9,24,55,54,12,56],"class_list":{"0":"post-76232","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-catskills","9":"tag-delco","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-hvexp","12":"tag-hvnews","13":"tag-latestnews","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","17":"tag-new-york-city-news","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-ny"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76232","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=76232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n