TOWN OF HIGHLAND, NY — As a new year rolls around, the status of the Camp FIMFO development in the Town of Highland remains unchanged, with town officials continuing to review the project and its potential environmental impacts. 

The historic Kittatinny Canoes campground in Highland is planned to become Camp FIMFO, with $40 million-plus worth of upgrades turning the site into one of a series of resort campgrounds nationwide. The project has inspired pushback from members of the local community, who argue it will have significant negative impacts on the area. 

The Highland Planning Board required the project team to prepare a Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), a detailed listing of the project’s potential impacts and remedies. The planning board started to review that document in June 2025, with the first of a series of workshops held on June 11.

Over half a year later, the planning board’s review process continues. 

“The proposed FEIS is still under review,” planning board chair Jeff Spitz told the River Reporter on December 31, 2025. “We don’t have an anticipated completion date yet. [You] can check back in two months to see where we are.”

Why the wait?

The scale of the FIMFO development project has given the Highland planning board significant challenges to overcome as it attempts to thoroughly evaluate the project’s potential impacts. 

Norm Sutherland, the previous chair of the Highland Planning Board and the chair in charge when FIMFO first appeared in the town, told the River Reporter in 2024 that the application was “probably” the longest-running application to any planning board in the county. 

While planning board members volunteer their time, the development team behind FIMFO has put significant financial and legal resources behind the project’s success: see riverreporter.com/stories/heavy-lifting,156282 for more. 

The planning board has taken actions which have slowed down development progress on FIMFO, resulting in the board having more time for thorough evaluation of the project. These actions include a split 3-2 vote in September 2023 to require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), a vote that set up the current phase of review. 

An EIS is required in New York State for projects that will have an impact on their surrounding environments. The EIS analyzes the project’s potential impacts and includes descriptions of mitigation efforts taken to minimize those impacts. 

The FIMFO project team wrote the draft EIS, resulting in the FEIS document currently under review by the planning board. However, it’s the planning board’s responsibility to review the FEIS and to revise it to the board’s own satisfaction. 

Expert opinions

To ensure the FEIS appropriately addresses the project’s potential impacts, the Highland Planning Board has sought help from outside experts to review specific segments of the document. 

The planning board received an update on the status of FIMFO’s review at its December 2025 meeting. According to the minutes from that meeting, town engineer Ken Ellsworth is close to finishing his review of the FEIS document. 

Outside experts have been contacted to review the portions of the FEIS dealing with noise, lighting and traffic management, according to the minutes. The only area where an expert still needs to be contacted is on the emergency evacuation procedures proposed in the FEIS. The town’s code enforcement officer suggested the planning board get in touch with the Sullivan County Office of Emergency Management on that front. 

Protecting the river

Other sources of input on FIMFO include the Upper Delaware Council (UDC) and the National Park Service (NPS). 

The UDC is a partnership of local state and federal governments with a stake in the health of the Upper Delaware, a 73.4-mile stretch of the Delaware River from just south of Hancock to just north of Port Jervis. Together with the NPS, the UDC maintains the River Management Plan (RMP), a document laying out guidelines on how to balance historic uses of the Upper Delaware (such as camping) with the preservation of the river’s health.

Both the UDC and the NPS have been involved throughout the process of FIMFO’s review, including in the final stages of the FEIS review. Representatives from both organizations have attended and offered input in the planning board’s workshops on the FEIS. 

On December 10, 2025, NPS Superintendent Lindsey Kurnath filed a letter with written responses to the proposed FEIS. 

In that letter, Kurnath made it clear that the NPS still believes the project to be incompatible with the RMP. The NPS made that determination in May 2023; the UDC had previously approved the project as compatible with the RMP in a split vote. 

The NPS position centers around the park-model RVs the project applicants intend to place at the site. The park model RVs appear as small cabins, and project plans include their year-round installation at the site. 

Because the objects are technically RVs, the applicants have attempted to get the project regulated as an RV campground, and argue that it is similar to other RV campgrounds in the Upper Delaware. The NPS disagrees, and points out that the park model RVs aren’t the only objects of concern. 

“The NPS position remains unchanged that the RMP prohibits permanent structures at campsites. While initial discussion on this topic focused on whether park model RVs are temporary structures, it should also be noted that the proposed tree top cabins are clearly permanent. Our position that the proposed park model RVs are permanent structures remains unchanged, and is based on the connection to utilities, and the intention that they remain in place in perpetuity,” wrote Kurnath. 

The NPS also maintains that the intensity of the proposed use is higher than permitted by the RMP, a factor that the project applicants have attempted to counter by arguing that the project’s density is within allowed metrics. 

FIMFO “would substantially alter the intensity of the existing primarily primitive tent camping facility in a manner that is incompatible with the traditional character of the area,” reads the letter. 

In addition to points about the amount of impervious space to be created and the types of trees to be planted, the NPS also offered suggestions on the evacuation plan. 

The evacuation plan as proposed relies “heavily” on info from the Delaware River gage at Barryville, according to the NPS. However, the NPS said, some factors make the info at that gage an imperfect parallel to conditions at the FIMFO site. 

“The applicant estimates that it will take 14.5 hours to evacuate camping structures, fire rings, garbage cans and picnic tables from the regulated floodplain. NPS is concerned that the applicant would lack sufficient time to effectively evacuate guests and equipment if they do not begin equipment evacuation when flooding is forecasted or becomes a high probability, rather than waiting for the river height to reach the action stage at the Barryville gage to begin evacuation mobilization,” wrote Kurnath. 

The NPS recommended revising the plan to include increased modeling, and to start evacuation when high water in the action stage is forecasted, among other steps. 

Editor's note: This article as initially published misidentified town engineer Ken Ellsworth. This has been corrected as of 9 a.m. on Friday, January 9.