My Comment to DEC on Gravel Mine’s Proposal to Expand Five-Fold: Agency Should Reject Plan, Enforce Reclamation

I submitted this comment today to the State Department of Environmental Conservation on the proposed expansion of the Padua Ridge gravel mine. The permitting decision is in the hands of DEC’s Region 8 office in Avon, but DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos and Gov. Kathy Hochul would be wise to check their work. This project, as recent reports in WaterFront document, is deeply flawed and deserves to be rejected. It poses a clear and present flooding risk to the Village of Watkins Glen, and it potentially jeopardizes the Watkins Glen State Park. Here’s my comment:

To Frances Knickmeyer, NYSDEC, on April 13, 2024:

I want thank the DEC for extending the deadline for public comment on the proposed expansion of the Padua Ridge gravel mine (doing business as It’s Greener Now), to April 13, 2024 — today — from the original deadline of Feb. 28. The public has used the additional time to conduct research, which led to the uncovering of major flaws and omissions in the permit applicant’s DEIS. Those defects are so serious that the agency should reject the application outright and require the mine owner to reclaim land that he has already mined illegally. Failing that, if the agency plans to continue entertaining the possibility of a mine expansion, it must require a supplementary environmental impact statement that is based on a thorough public scoping process. The defects in the current DEIS are that glaring. The following is an incomplete list of its errors and omissions:

1/ Reclamation of mined land. The DEIS proposes to abandon a specific provision in the 2008 final scoping outline for a Padua Ridge expansion that calls for no more than 15 acres to be mined at one time. The only reclamation limit  found in the DEIS states: “the area of disturbance never exceeds 50 acres.” This dangerous concession would allow the mine owner to more than triple the size of the scar on the landscape — a totally unjustified blight on the countryside in an area that relies on tourists who are drawn to its natural beauty. Furthermore, tripling the area unprotected by vegetation on this ridge would dramatically elevate erosion risks, needlessly exposing the neighborhood and village below to new flooding risks. The 2008 scoping document was explicit about reclamation for a reason. What is the rationale for abandoning it?

2/ Flooding. The DEIS says the mine owner plans to build a channel to the Watkins Glen drainage easement (drainage ditch) to handle its stormwater overflow during extreme weather events — purportedly only in events worse than a 100-year flood. This drainage ditch was designed and constructed to protect the Village of Watkins Glen from flooding in response to the serious village floods of the 1960s. It was never intended to serve as a free insurance policy for a privately owned gravel mine dug above it. Further, the DEIS makes no comment on the degree to which the mine’s overflows during a weather emergency would compromise the drainage ditch’s ability to fulfill its intended  function of protecting the village. Additionally, the mine’s “overflows” are clearly not limited to rare storms. Recent photos document the stormwater and sediment overflows from the mine into the ditch. They are routine, not rare. And the sediment buildup is reducing — perhaps fatally — the ditch’s utility. 

3/ No traffic study. No dust study. No vibration study. These were left out of the DEIS because they were carelessly omitted from the 2008 final scoping outline. But that narrowly tailored scoping outline was written by a DEC staff that only one year earlier had issued a negative declaration on a proposal to expand the mine seven-fold. That 2007 Neg Dec WAIVED an environmental impact statement. It was only rescinded and reversed under public pressure. Although  the DEC staff finally acknowledged the need for an EIS, it stoped short of writing a rigorous scoping outline to guide it.

When Wojcik revived his project a decade later, the state Parks and Recreation Department highlighted key omissions in a 2019 comment: “We found no assessment of anticipated increases in noise, dust, vibration, truck traffic or other direct and indirect impacts that the expansion of this extractive (industry) would have on the historic (Watkins Glen State Park).” Inexplicably, the Parks Department abruptly brushed off these concerns in a brief December 2021 letter. It never explained why it no longer mattered that there was no analysis of truck traffic or vibration and only a cursory discussion of dust. The DEC must never base its crucial permitting decision on such a flimsy pillar. Gravel trucks from the Padua mine have crashed, strewn gravel and damaged property only yards from Watkins Glen’s busiest intersection. The route gravel trucks most commonly take — State Route 409 into the village — has a notoriously sharp curve at the bottom of a long hill. And yet the DEIS provides no data on the future (or even present) volume of gravel trucks, the routes they frequent or their hours of operation. 

4/ Chronic rule violations by the permit applicant. The mine’s owner is a repeated rule violator who does not deserve to be rewarded with a permit to quintuple his operation. The DEC has signed at least three consent agreements with Martin Wojcik and/or his companies. In each case he has been fined and obligated to reclaim land that the DEC says he mined illegally. And yet, these disturbed acres were never reclaimed within agency-set deadlines, if they were reclaimed at all. To this day, the vast majority of the illegally mined land remains unreclaimed. If the DEC were to approve his expansion plan as is, it would impose on the neighborhood and village below the inevitable bad consequences of his habitual rule-breaking.

5/ Potential Damage to the Watkins Glen State Park. This is a largely unexplored issue that is reckless to neglect. It’s unclear why the state Parks Department has chosen such a passive role. It did manage it induce the mine’s owner to provide a bit more information on noise, but it gave up on truck traffic, dust and vibration. That apparent dereliction of duty should not provide an excuse for the DEC to award permission for a five-fold expansion of the mine. The park attracted 1.3 million visitors last year. It is the crown jewel of the region, and it deserves rigorous protection. It is insufficient to rely on experts paid for by the mine’s owner to evaluate whether dust, vibration, traffic and noise will affect park visitors … or to pass judgment on the hydrologic relationship between the mining area and the tourist-favorite gorge less than a quarter-mile away. If the DEC decides to require a supplemental environmental impact statement, independent studies funded by the government must be required for each of these issues, including noise. 

6/ The squelching of public involvement. The defects in the DEIS uncovered in the relatively brief public comment period are unlikely to be the only problems with this application to expand the mine. They just were the ones quickly discovered. More public involvement, earlier, undoubtedly would have yielded a better proposal. For whatever reason, the DEC chose to keep key local officials in the dark for years — from 2017 through January 2024 — about Wojcik’s interest in reviving his expansion project after it had sat dormant for a decade. Consider, for  example, Phil Barnes, the Schuyler County legislator who represents the Town of Dix, where the mine is located. He owns a home on the hill, 800 feet below the drainage ditch that may or may not protect him and Watkins Glen in the next major rain event. Barnes said he was stunned to learn in January that the DEC was considering a five-fold expansion of the mine. A journalist had to tell him. A very flawed public process kept him out of the loop. Why? One speaker at the DEC’s public hearing in Watkins Glen in February, called the DEC to task for its failure to follow its mission statement, especially its purported goal of empowering individuals to participate in environmental decisions that affect their lives.

For these reasons, the DEC’s best option is to deny the IGN permit application and rigorously enforce rules that apply to the mine owner. He must be required both to reclaim land that he has mined illegally and the permitted land that has been completely mined under his permit.

Peter Mantius, Publisher of WaterFront