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Survey Of 2022 Cases Under State Environmental Quality Review Act, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan
Survey Of 2022 Cases Under State Environmental Quality Review Act, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan
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The courts in New York issued 43 opinions in 2022 under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA). Of these, the largest number — 27 — upheld agency decisions not to prepare an environmental impact statement (EIS), and eight overturned such decisions. Six cases upheld actions that had been the subject of an EIS; none overturned such actions. Two cases can’t be classified in this fashion.
These numbers are in line with the longstanding pattern that a project’s greatest litigation vulnerability under SEQRA is the failure to prepare an EIS; if an EIS has been prepared, very rarely will the …
New York Adopts Nation’S Strongest Environmental Justice Law, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan
New York Adopts Nation’S Strongest Environmental Justice Law, Michael B. Gerrard, Edward Mctiernan
Faculty Scholarship
On March 3, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the strongest environmental justice (EJ) law in the United States. While federal guidelines and the laws of some other states — notably California, Massachusetts, and Washington — require analysis, disclosure and consideration of EJ issues, only a New Jersey law adopted in 2020 imposed substantive limitations, as we discussed in our May 12, 2021, column. New York’s new law—building on enactments in 2019 and 2020 — is even more restrictive.
The new law — which we’ll call the EJL — provides that the Department of Environmental Conservation(DEC) “shall not issue an …