NY’S BATTLE PLAN TO STOP URBAN SPRAWL FACES DOOM
30 BY 30 ACT REQUIRES STATE PROTECT 30% OF GREEN SPACE BY 2030 BUT LAWMAKERS HAVEN'T FUNDED IT TO WIN FIGHT.
A skidder at a logging operation in upstate New York’s Adirondack mountains in 2022. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
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6,000 acres of forests, fields and other green space vanish under the bulldozer's blade every single day in America, the US Forest Service reports. Between 2002 and 2017, about 11 million acres of farm or ranch land alone was swallowed by urban sprawl. In New York during those years, 344 square miles of open space disappeared. Loss of biodiversity threatens life.
To stop the sprawl, the state legislature passed and Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the 30 By 30 Act into law last December 23. Its goal, in brief, is to preserve the last of New York's wildest places from development. Under the law, the state must "facilitate the conservation of at least" 30% of New York's remaining unprotected “lands and inland waters” by 2030.
It's a truly massive undertaking. On New Year's Day 2024, the Hochul administration will have 6 years to protect almost 3.2 million acres of green space to satisfy the law, according to a November report by Protect The Adirondacks!, an environmental advocacy group based in northern New York.
If the state agrees with the green group's calculations, New York will have to buy more than 500,000 acres every year for six years.
To put the size of that task into context, New York completed a total of 32 land acquisition projects in 2022—the latest year data is available—protecting a total of 5,806 acres for about $5,886,000.
Despite the enormity of the job, the Hochul administration still doesn't have a plan to get that job done one year after the 30 By 30 law's enactment. And the State Legislature still hasn't dedicated enough money to buy enough land to meet the stated goal-or even to hire the small army of workers required.
While the Governor and state legislative leaders focus their attention on other crises, an extraordinarily beautiful miniature "Grand Canyon" now on sale in upstate New York is just one of the natural gems that will likely be lost to private development.
Other wild places that could be lost include two giant blocks of wilderness in the heart of the Adirondack mountains.
Fly-fishing for wild trout in the Chateaugay River chasm. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
The Chateaugay River Chasm lies along the Canadian Frontier. It's a part of the state most New Yorkers never see. Wide open and gently sloping down into the broad St. Lawrence River valley, it's like Western "Big Sky" country—400 miles north of the Big Apple.
The chasm itself is a crack in the quilt of farms that cover the land there. It includes the towering 120-foot tall High Falls as well as a narrow rift with sheer cliffs for walls—100 feet high in places—and the smaller, horseshoe-shaped Rainbow Falls. The land immediately surrounding it is heavily forested and spiked with towering hemlock and pine.
Shaded from the sun by the tall trees and high canyon walls, the river at the bottom of the chasm stays cool even in summer. Wild ferns and exotic flowers grow in the chilly microclimate below. The cold water allows the wild brown and brook trout who fill the river to flourish.
It's an extraordinary, irreplaceable natural area. No other place quite like it exists in New York. Currently, 74 acres of it are on sale for $875,000.
Another extraordinary natural area currently on sale is the 36,000-acre Whitney Park.
More than twice the size of Manhattan, it's the largest private landholding remaining in the Adirondacks. It has 22 lakes and ponds, 100 miles of undeveloped shoreline and has been in the Whitney family since the 1890s. John Hendrickson, widower of Blue Blood socialite Marylou Whitney, refused to sell to the state. He put it up for sale to only private buyers in 2020.
Ralph Waldo Emerson held court on Follensby Pond during the "Philosophers' Camp" in the summer of 1858. The state has been trying to add the 14,600-acre Follensby tract to its Forest Preserve since 1994. It failed then, failed again in 1999 and failed a third time in 2013. Its aging owners finally sold it to the Nature Conservancy—which is holding on to it for whenever New York decides to try a fourth time.
Meanwhile, holding onto Follensby is tying up Conservancy cash that could be used to fund more land purchases.
New York State Forest Preserve, Adirondack mountain High Peak Region, the Great Range, l-r, Gothics, Saddleback, Basin and Marcy, July 2015. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
New York has 31,369,853 million acres of land and inland waters. To preserve 30%, 9,410,956 acres need to be protected from development. Fortunately, more than 6 million already are.
That's largely thanks to the state's stunning 3 million acre Forest Preserve. The Victorian Age miracle protects all of New York's tallest mountains—46 peaks above 4,000 feet in the Adirondacks, 35 peaks above 3,500 feet in the Catskills—and the largest true, roadless wilderness east of the Mississippi.
The entire Preserve is shielded from political meddling by Article XIV, Section 1 of the State Constitution. Ratified by overwhelming popular vote of the People in 1894, it commands the Preserve "shall be forever kept as wild forest lands." Called the Forever Wild Clause, it's the first example in world history of constitutional Conservationism and legal protection for wilderness.
New York also has about 850,000 acres of recreation and conservation easements on private lands; 700,000 acres of State Forests; 350,000 acres of state parkland and over 100,000 acres of agricultural easements. Towns and counties hold another 236,000 acres of parks or forests.
Private conservation groups hold an additional 500,000 acres—like the Nature Conservancy's Follensby Pond Tract.
Add it all up and about 20% of New York is currently protected, according to Protect the Adirondacks!'s November report.
That means only 10%, or about 3,190,806 acres, needs to be protected to meet the 30 By 30 goal.
Of the 25 million acres of open space available, 12 million are composed of approximately 253,000 parcels ranging in size from 10 acres to over 100 acres, according to the report.
For example, the 74-acre Châteaugay chasm parcel.
"These parcels present a golden opportunity for the State to protect significant acreages of forestlands and unique habitats that can help the State meet its 30 by 30 goal," the report says.
New York State Forest Preserve, Catskill mountains, July 2015. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
The 30 By 30 law "directs" the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Office of State Parks, Recreation & Historical Preservation to develop New York's 30 By 30 plan in "coordination with the state land acquisition plan." The plan “shall" prioritize "protections for water resources and sole source aquifers including wetland protections."
The Hochul administration has until July 1, 2024 to finalize the plan, under the law. Nothing prevents it from acting sooner.
A spokesperson for the DEC said the 30 By 30 "law complements DEC’s pre-existing conservation efforts and aims to expedite the process. DEC and State Parks are working together with other state agency partners to coordinate strategies to achieve the goal."
Meanwhile, DEC announced it was revising its Open Space Conservation Plan. The Open Space Conservation Plan is, in essence, the state's priority target list of lands to protect. New York's current list was first published in 2016. Many parcels, including Follensby, have been listed for years.
"The entire update process takes approximately two years and includes a public comment period which is anticipated to take place in the summer of 2024," a September 13 DEC news release said.
Adirondack wood mill, Au Sable Forks, 1910. Photo Credit: New York State Archives.
New York's long history of acquiring land for its Forest Preserve offers important lessons for officials planning the massive land acquisitions required by the 30 By 30 law.
New York is a pioneer of public lands, beginning in Manhattan with Central Park in 1858. The state legislature got the Forest Preserve started in 1885 with 681,000 acres in the Adirondacks and 34,000 acres in the Catskills. They weren't forests but largely burned-out wastelands abandoned by Timber Barons after being clear-cut for a quick buck.
The barons walked away and left it to the state clean up their mess.
After creating the Preserve in 1885, the state slowly grew it.
From the beginning, governors and state legislative leaders decided not to use the legal but potentially controversial power of eminent domain to take land from private owners to add to the Forest Preserve. Using eminent domain, they wisely reasoned, invited public backlash. Forest Preserve land would only be acquired from willing sellers.
That meant state lawmakers had to raise taxes or voters had to approve bond acts to pay for it.
New York's forests were the life of Norman J. VanValkenburgh.
VanValkenburgh was Director of DEC's Division of Lands and Forests when he researched and authored a 1982 report detailing the decades of inconsistent funding that plagued DEC's land acquisition program for the Preserve.
Legislative appropriations were generally insufficient. Acquisitions were largely driven by periodic bond act infusions, roughly every decade or two, according to VanValkenburgh's report.
Even with bond act funds, DEC consistently failed to hire enough land-acquisition workers, particularly surveyors, to get the job done timely.
"No land can be acquired until surveyors, appraisals and negotiations are completed," VanValkenburgh wrote.
"In all cases, the major responsibilities for the acquisition efforts have been carried out by the Bureau of Real Property Services," he reported, "to the extent that during the various Bond Act periods the Bureau's other functions of administrative surveys and other land management responsibilities have been set aside completely or seriously curtailed."
New York City’s massive 8,315-acre Ashokan Reservoir in the Catskills, as seen from Overlook Mountain, New York State Forest Preserve, July 2015. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
New York City's watershed lands are also a big piece of the state's 30 By 30 puzzle.
The City's water supply system is a wonder of the world. 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes connected by a massive system of entirety gravity-powered aqueducts provide about 1 billion gallons of drinking water a day to over 10 million people living in the City and surrounding suburbs. The system holds a total of about 580 billion gallons and is designed to withstand the worst calamities nature can unleash.
90% of the City's water comes from giant reservoirs located far to the north and west of the City in the Catskill mountains. Water from that system is not filtered, unlike water from the City's first reservoir system centered on the Croton River in suburban Westchester County—it has been filtered since 2015.
The City's Catskill reservoir system is the largest unfiltered public water system in America.
Since 1989, federal law has required public surface water supply systems like the New York City's to filter their water or apply for waivers if they meet specified criteria for purity. The City obtained waivers from federal regulators for its Catskill systems based on promises to acquire more land around its reservoirs to insulate them from development and contamination.
Prior to 1997, the City owned 34,193 acres of land around its Catskill reservoirs. Today, the City owns or protects through conservation easements a total of 213,631 acres, according to the 2022 Annual Filtration Avoidance Report prepared by the City's Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP.
The most the City ever acquired in one year was 59,000 acres in 2019.
Like the State's Forest Preserve land acquisition program, the City's watershed land program suffered delays caused by lack of assessors and surveyors.
"Several" contract "disruptions" slowed land acquisition by limiting the City's ability "to advance real estate deals by conducting timely "appraisals and surveys," according to the City's 2023-2024 Solicitation Plan.
A spokesperson for the DEP didn’t answer questions about challenges the City’s land acquisition program faced.
“For your question of how land fits into the 30 by 30 plan, I would refer you to the State DEC,” John Milgrim, the spokesman, said.
The Hudson River and the Valley around it at night, as seen from Overlook Mountain, State Forest Preserve, July 2014. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
Since 1993, money for land acquisition has come from real estate transfer taxes deposited into the state's Environmental Protection Fund. $400 million in EPF funds are in the 2024 budget, but only $6 million is allocated state-wide for land acquisition.
The $4.2 billion Environmental Bond Act of 2022 sets aside only $300 million for land and recreation easement acquisition. It includes another $150 million for agricultural easements.
The Hochul administration announced the Bond Act's first grants in December 2022. To date, they have not included land acquisition.
Meanwhile, the City projects acquiring another 137,000 acres—or 197 square miles—around its Catskill reservoirs by 2034. $25 million in 2024 EPF cash is earmarked to fund the purchases.
But a political brawl is breaking out over the plan.
Local lawmakers in two Catskill counties, Delaware and Greene, recently passed resolutions officially protesting it.
Roxbury Town Supervisor Allen Hinckley told the Albany Times Union the City's land acquisition “basically decimated all of our development opportunities in the Catskills and in Delaware County."
The towns, not the City or lawmakers in Albany, he added, "should have the final say about whether it happens.”
A tree saw at a logging operation in upstate New York’s Adirondack mountains in 2022. Photo Credit: JB Nicholas.
Local politics is just one of the pitfalls the state faces implementing the 30 By 30 law. Officials also face a serious practical problem too.
To meet the 30 By 30 law's stated goal, New York is going to have to stand-up a small army of assessors, surveyors and other real estate acquisition specialists to execute the largest land buying spree in state history—one several orders of magnitude larger than its current land acquisition apparatus.
Just getting the number of state-licensed surveyors required is going to be a challenge: there's a widespread surveyor shortage.
The shortage is caused by a knotty mix of factors. In New York, they start with the State's arduous licensing standards—which at a minimum require an associate's degree in land surveying combined with five-and-a-half years of field experience that's increasingly hard to get.
To achieve its 30 By 30 goals, the state might have to relax its standards for land surveyor licensing. Or it could choose to develop a special program to train surveyors specifically for its land acquisition program—like the New York City Park’s Department had to do to hire enough aborists.
While the state has to build-up its land acquisition bureaucracy, it also needs to streamline its procedures.
David Gibson, a life-long Adirondack-based Conservation advocate, detailed the current administrative obstacles to a robust land acquisition program in a 2022 Adirondack Enterprise Op-Ed.
"Time passes, sometimes lots of time," Gibson summarized. "The parcel must ultimately get approval to become part of the Governor’s Executive Budget. Years may have elapsed in the meantime."
That's why, Gibson explained, areas "with great resource value are lost to conversion from forest, farm, grassland, and natural coastline to all manner of human development."
"And therein, potentially, lies one big bottleneck to achieving the 30 by 2030 objective."
The Free Lance asked spokespersons for Gov. Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Speaker of the Assembly Carl Heastie whether they support budgeting more money or a new bond act to fund the scale of land acquisition required to meet the 30 By 30 law’s 2030 deadline. None responded.
“There is a path for achieving the goal of the 30 by 30 Act," insists Claudia Braymer, Protect the Adirondacks! deputy director.
"It requires," she pointedly added, "state leaders, state government, private conservation organizations, land trusts, and local governments across New York to work together to tackle this monumental challenge.”
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