We recognize that the Town of Cochecton Planning Board had no choice but to accede to the gravel mine planned by Little Joseph Realty. That doesn’t stop the project from being a monumentally dumb idea. The site will be diagonally across from the proposed Upper Delaware Scenic Byway Visitors’ Center, part of an effort to invigorate tourism, generate income and create jobs all along the river. It would be hard to find a less desirable location for a mining operation the length and breadth of the byway.
Locals could do nothing in this case because, in general, state law gives mining interests priority over local ordinances such as those regarding setbacks involved in the Cochecton case. But there is an interesting exception: apparently, according to Sullivan County Treasurer and lawyer Ira Cohen, if towns pass ordinances completely forbidding mining in a town or zone of a town, as opposed to just trying to impost restrictions like setbacks, courts have ruled that local ordinances have precedence.
What this means is that if local officials want to retain control over the land in our towns when it comes to extraction industries, they will have to identify areas, like the byway visitors’ center site, that they want to be sure will remain inviolate, and establish zoning ordinances for them that prohibit mining entirely. It has become obvious that our little paradise will become increasingly disturbed by extractive industries of one sort or another in coming years, and to take such action, given the current state of the law, seems like basic prudence.
There is also a bill currently bottled up in the Environmental Conservation Committee that would make this precedence of local control versus that of mining interests in areas like ours more explicit. Section 1, Subdivision 3 of section 23-2703 of New York State Environmental Law currently forbids state agencies from considering an application for a permit to mine complete or processing it if mining is prohibited by local ordinances in the area in question. However, it does so with one big hitch: it applies only “within counties with a population of one million or more which draws its primary source of drinking water for a majority of county residents from a designated sole source aquifer.”
The bill in question, S1258, would strike out the clause quoted above, so that the section reads: “No agency of this state shall consider an application for a permit to mine as complete or process such application for a permit to mine pursuant to this title if local [zoning] laws or ordinances prohibit the proposed mining use or uses within the area proposed to be mined… .” This law would stop the permitting process before it got started, even in rural areas like ours.
The bill has been bottled up in committee for 14 years, but Albany has just experienced its biggest shakeup in decades. For the first time in 43 years, Democrats control the state senate. That means the Environmental Conservation Committee has a new chairman and a differently balanced membership. We don’t know for sure that the new committee will be friendlier to the bill than the outgoing one—but it’s hard to do any worse than seven strikeouts in a row.
We don’t quite know what’s been holding S1258 up, but it’s probably worth pushing along. We would think that Sullivan County’s John Bonacic (R-I-C New Hope) would be particularly receptive if his constituents called on him to support his colleague Stephen Saland, the Republican from Poughkeepsie who sponsored the bill. Bonacic is not on the environmental committee, but he’s a strong proponent of home rule. And he surely has formed alliances in Albany that might prove helpful.
Whatever can be done from here on in, the Little Joseph gravel mine is a done deal. But, by reviewing our ordinances with regard to mining use, making sure the land we want to remain inviolate is protected and pushing along S1258, maybe we can prevent suffering an outcome as dumb as a mining operation across from a hoped-for tourist attraction in the future.
Dr. Punnybone
My funny Valentine
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David Jones bemoans in his letter about protectionism in the February 5 issue of The River Reporter that “We are transferring our wealth to other nations and we are in big trouble.” But he advocates encouraging our wealth to be transferred to Norway, which owns a large share of the leases of Chesapeake. That is a contradiction.
He lauds natural gas as clean and cheap, even though overall it releases in its production and burning similar amounts of pollution as other fossil fuels and can’t be profitably extracted from Marcellus Shale unless the price comes back up to compare with oil.
He says, “Other energy sources must be developed, but we must be realistic because they will take time.” Not true. They are ready to deploy now and only take our commitment and funding.
