DEC Says Gravel Mine Owner Has Fully Restored 8.5 Acres He’d Mined Illegally; Watkins Glen Mayor Disputes That

WATKINS GLEN, July 26, 2024 — State officials say an 8.5-acre site that was illegally mined on a ridge above the Village of Watkins Glen has been fully reclaimed, but Mayor Laurie DeNardo and others dispute that conclusion based on a recent aerial photo.

“The village has already seen the devastation with storm water overflow, flooding and infrastructure damage due to the unauthorized transformations at Padua Ridge,” DeNardo said. “Not holding property owners accountable for a full reclamation is inexcusable and should be corrected at once.”

In 2022, Padua Ridge LLC and its owner, Martin Wojcik, were fined $20,000 for mining the site without the state’s permission. Under a consent agreement between the state Department of Environmental Conservation and Wojcik, Padua Ridge was ordered to fully reclaim the excavated area north of Route 409 by June 2022.

It missed that deadline to restore topsoil, regrade and reseed. Padua Ridge also missed the DEC’s extended June 2023 deadline for reclamation, as well as the June 2024 deadline, which was recently extended to July 15.

On Wednesday, the DEC said its July 15 inspection of the site showed that it had been fully reclaimed as required by the 2022 consent agreement. It declined to share the inspection report.

But an aerial photo of the site taken July 19 showed bare patches that raised questions about whether the site had, in fact, been fully reclaimed.

“The DEC is allowing companies to violate their permits, is lax on deadlines, and just gives up if the owner doesn’t fully comply,” said Yvonne Taylor, co-founder of Seneca Lake Guardian, a non-profit environmental group. “Is ‘close enough’ the DEC’s new guidance on reclaiming land?”

Another Wojcik company, It’s Greener Now LLC (IGN), is now seeking DEC’s permission to quintuple the size of its permitted gravel mine on the south side of Route 409. 

The DEC shocked local officials in January when it released a 784-page draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for IGN’s plan to expand from 14.33 acres to more than 75 acres. The village, the Schuyler County Legislature and virtually every local resident who commented on the plan voiced opposition.

They cited flooding risks to the village, as well as potential traffic, dust and noise problems. The state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation warned of serious risks to the popular Watkins Glen State Park, the mine’s immediate neighbor. 

“Does anybody really believe that if he (Wojcik) is allowed to (go ahead) with his plan that he will follow the rules? Any rules?” Billy Pylypciw wrote in a comment to the DEC earlier this year.

Pylypciw owns about 25 acres downhill from the illegally mined site. A culvert under Route 409 allows stormwater to flow from the Padua Ridge property to a drainage ditch that passes by his house on Division Street.

The ditch routinely handled flows from rainstorms until 2018, when the unauthorized excavations north of Route 409 began, he told the DEC. “About six years ago, coinciding with Marty (Wojcik) digging across the road, there was a huge influx of water … filled with a lot of sediment.”

To deal with the extra stormwater flows, local officials increased the size of a drainage pipe and placed riprap (rocks used to slow gushing water and prevent erosion) in the ditch that passed in front of his house, Pylypciw said. But those steps didn’t prevent a torrent of muddy water that he caught on video from his porch on July 21, 2021.

That same rainstorm flooded Watkins Glen.

About two months later, DEC inspectors visited the Padua Ridge site with Wojcik to decide “if stormwater was leaving the site, and if the excavation was in violation” of the law. 

On Dec. 3, 2021, the DEC ordered Wojcik to halt all illegal mining on the property. The consent agreement and fine followed three months later.

The DEC has entered two other consent agreements with Wojcik for violations of state permits for the IGN gravel mine south of Route 409 — one in 2011 and the other in 2023.

None of the three enforcement actions were mentioned in IGN’s 784-page DEIS filed with its application to quintuple its size. They only came to the public’s attention as a result of a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) inquiry from WaterFront.

Asked why the DEC approved the DEIS for release to the public without requiring disclosure of the consent agreements, the agency said: “Violations and their resolution, e.g., through consent agreements, are a separate process from the approval of a DEIS and are considered during permitting reviews.”

Taylor of Seneca Lake Guardian said she objects to that agency policy.

“The DEC has an obligation to make sure that the public is aware of any prior violations during the public comment period for an expansion application. Without full knowledge, how can the people effectively evaluate the potential harms to their community and give adequate feedback to DEC?”

The 2011 consent order is particularly relevant to Wojcik’s bid to expand his gravel mine from 14.33 acres to more than 75 acres.

That order included a $15,000 fine for illegally excavating 3.72 acres outside the permitted boundaries of his mine, including parts of the hillside that separates the mine from St. Mary’s Cemetery and the Watkins Glen State Park. 

Those 3.72 acres fall within the proposed new boundaries for the mine, potentially legalizing what had been illegal.

Also, the DEIS deviates significantly from the DEC’s final scoping document, which laid out requirements for any expansion of the IGN gravel mine. The 2008 scoping document specified that mining must never exceed 15 acres at any time. The DEIS raised that limitation to 50 acres.

Critics have argued that the change, if OKed in by DEC permitting, would give Wojcik carte blanche to delay or avoid reclamation of mined acres and make the mining activity much move visible to local residents and visiting tourists.

For example, the change would relieve the DEC of the need to enforce its 2023 consent agreement, which included a $25,000 fine and required reclamation of 1.6 acres outside the 14.33-acre mine’s permitted border.

The DEC deviated from the explicit provision within its 2008 scoping document in the summer of 2022, not long after an agency official who had repeatedly insisted on retaining the provision was transferred from the DEC’s Avon office to the agency’s office in Buffalo.  

That official’s replacement promptly declared that a new version of the DEIS with the 50-acre mining limit was ready for public review.

The DEC did not respond to repeated requests for its July 15 inspection report on the illegally mined Padua Ridge property.

Wojcik did not respond to emailed questions.

The DEC’s entire July 24, 2024 statement to WaterFront is here.

(After WaterFront posted this article, the DEC responded again, saying that three “photographs of the (July 15, 2024) site inspection confirm Padua Ridge LLC completed the reclamation of the affected area.” These are the three photos the agency offered as proof of the full reclamation. The agency did not share a copy of the site inspection report. It suggested filing a new FOIL inquiry.)