On the DEP's website, as of June 1: A 400-plus page Draft Environmental Impact Statement outlining proposed plans to extend New York City's program of land acquisition in its upstate watershed for another ten years. (Sorry we missed it. It might help if the DEP used their fancy online press-release system to alert us to these things.)
The Catskill Daily Mail reports that town supervisors in the watershed, who helped draft the plans, are now slogging through them:
At Tuesday night’s Town of Hunter board meeting, Hunter Supervisor Dennis Lucas told those present that he is slowly working his way through the 410-page document.
Lucas, who is chairman of the multi-county Coalition of Watershed Towns, is already very familiar with what he hopes to read in the document, having, along with his peers, helped shape its course during its development, so his reading is essentially to verify what did or did not make it in.
As the DEP's website notes, the DEIS is available in hard copy at several municipal offices around the watershed as well as online. Public hearings to get input on its contents will be scheduled for next month. (Hopefully soon.) But if you want to speak up, you'd better read it quickly: Public comments will only be accepted until about 10 days after the hearings, says DEP.
Apparently Daily Mail reporter Jim Planck was as aggrieved as we were that the DEP didn't issue a press release.
The City’s DEIS on its proposed extended Land Acquisition Program is available on line — in parts and as a whole unit — at www.nyc.gov, but was only locatable by searching the on-site terms “DEIS” and “acquisition.”
But Mr. Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.
