Local Officials Push State For Issues Conference On Desal Plant (VIDEO)

Rockland County Legislature Chairwoman Harriet Cornell said county and locally elected state representatives met on Monday in Albany with officials from various state departments to talk about an issues conference on the proposed desalination plant.  Cornell said she and local officials, Legislator Alden Wolfe, State Senator David Carlucci, Assembly members Ellen Jaffee and Annie Rabbit, met with Larry Schwartz, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s secretary, Gary Brown of the Public Service Commission, the state secretary for the environment and a representative of the state Department of Environmental Conservation. 

Cornell said they discussed the need for the state Department of Environmental Conservation to hold an issues conference to go into issues that remain unresolved since the submission of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and newly found information concerning water supplies. 

“That’s really what we talked about yesterday was the need for an issues conference to resolve many unresolved issues having to do with costs, construction, operating costs, ultimate costs to ratepayers,” said Cornell.

United Water proposed the desalination plant to treat Hudson River water. A heavily attended public hearing was held on the Haverstraw Water Project last year.  

She said an issues conference is different from a public hearing and could look at a variety of topics have been raised and deal with the conflcting statements made about the proposed plant.

“We talked quite a bit about the other options that were not studied carefully in the DEIS,” she said. “And we felt there are many things that need to be resolved before we move forward.” 

The county legislature voted in October in favor of requesting an issues conference on the proposed Hudson River water treatment plant and County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef sent a letter in support of it also. 

“We’re going to follow up by asking many of the towns and villages to join us in calling for an issues conference,” said Cornell.

According to the DEC website there are specific reasons for an issues conference:

• hear arguments on whether party status should be granted
• narrow or resolve disputed issues of fact
• hear argument about whether disputed issues of fact should be adjudicated at a hearing
• determine whether legal issues exist that are not fact dependent
• decide any pending motions

Wolfe listed various merits for holding an issues conference.

“Really regardless of whether you’re for or against this particular project it’s about due process and giving people in the community the right to be heard, the right to have the various claims of both sides of the debate tested before an administrative law judge so that there’s full transparency and avoid the appearance that there’s a decision being made in a back room,” he said.