WURTSBORO — Jessica Lansdale, the President of the Lakes Communities Alliance of Rock Hill, highlighted a proposal for the creation of a Critical Environmental Area (CEA) within town limits to the Mamakating Town Board Tuesday night.

“It doesn’t change the zoning. It’s not a law and it definitely does not affect personal property and private property,” clarified Lansdale. “The only thing it really does is it encourages additional consideration during local government review of environmental impacts that are associated with large development proposals.”

She noted that if a distribution center wants to build something in the town, they have to be reviewed under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR).

“If it’s a CEA that they want to do this in,” said Lansdale, “there’s a box that they have to check on the form...”

According to Lansdale, this would give the Planning and Town Board a flag or “extra leverage” to order thorough environmental studies and not push the boundaries of zoning that they’ve set up. As previously reported by the Sullivan County Democrat, the Town of Bethel also recently just saw a CEA designation.

As a home rule, the CEA has to be under the township. The Department of Environmental Conservation holds it and doesn’t monitor or regulate it. Part of the CEA process involves a public “meeting” [hearing].

The public would be invited to attend a meeting, learn about and comment on it. Lansdale suggested setting up a meeting in the near future after the Board has reviewed the documents she gave them.

If the Board decides to go this route, Lansdale also wanted help defining the boundaries of the CEA area.

“We could go as wide as the entire township, we certainly won’t do that, what we’re really concerned in is the watershed area between the Delaware and Hudson Rivers, and the Basha Kill,” explained Lansdale.

She explained that she had a number of endorsements from groups such as the Basha Kill Area Association, Catskill Mountainkeeper, the D&H Historical Society, among others.

She stated that while not all the Lakes formally endorsed [because the Boards have a policy not to publicly endorse things] all were “very helpful” with her biodiversity studies.

Councilman Peter Goodman commented that one of the things he found fascinating was the importance of getting everyone together to do this.

“You described how important it is to have...properties for movement of animals and...they need to have that highway of woods that they are able to go from one place to another,” stated Goodman. “It really needs to encompass so much of what we have up here [like all the lakes].”

Town Supervisor Michael Robbins informed Lansdale that they’ll set something up with her and he’ll make sure all the councilpeople get it.

He will also set up a date for a public forum with the Lake Alliance.

“Just to reassure everybody because we got a lot of phone calls about it, they’re not trying to take away motorboats on lakes,” reminded Robbins. “This has more to do with zoning than boats on a lake.”

He reminded meeting attendees that questions could be answered and discussed at the potential public forum.