Protect the Highlands Files Lawsuit Challenging New York State’s Environmental Approval of Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail

Protect the Highlands says the state ignored concerns of residents, environmental organizations, and its own agencies in approving a project that would drive up to a million visitors annually into small Hudson Highlands communities already struggling with overtourism.

COLD SPRING, NY — On Tuesday, May 19, Protect the Highlands and four residents of Cold Spring filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court challenging the environmental review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) conducted by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) for the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail project.

The lawsuit, filed as an Article 78 proceeding in Albany County, the headquarters of OPRHP, challenges OPRHP’s acceptance of the Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement (FGEIS) for the project. The petition demonstrates that OPRHP failed to identify and mitigate the adverse environmental impacts of the project, including harm to the endangered sturgeon that inhabit the Hudson River, traffic in the small communities that will be affected by the thousands of new visitors that the trail is designed to attract to an already overcrowded area, and actively withheld from the public its own studies that show that the construction of the trail will threaten the stability of the Metro North rail line and prevent Metro North from addressing the effects of climate change which threaten to flood the rail line in coming years. 

The Fjord Trail project is being advanced by Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, Inc. (HHFT), a subsidiary of Scenic Hudson, with significant financial backing from the Shelby Cullom Davis Charitable Fund, a family foundation whose involvement in the Fjord Trail is driven by Wall Street investment manager Chris Davis, who is also Chair of HHFT.

Under the terms of a cooperative agreement for the project, HHFT—the project’s sponsor and applicant—is obligated to defend the state agency in legal proceedings challenging the project’s environmental review. As a result, the state’s environmental review will be defended in court not by the state itself, but by the private organization that sought and received the approval being challenged.

The Fjord Trail is a proposed multi-use facility to accommodate those walking, running, biking (including e-biking), using strollers or wheel chairs and consisting of a network of parking lots and other infrastructure planned for development along the Hudson River between the Village of Cold Spring and the City of Beacon on privately owned properties and properties owned by Metro-North, HHFT, Inc. and NYS OPRHP. 

As approved, building the Fjord Trail would require impact hammering more than 400 pilings into the Hudson River shoreline to construct a ten foot wide over-water boardwalk; slashing a 14-foot-wide trail through sensitive ecosystems, including Hudson River tidal wetlands; and clearcutting mature woodlands within Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve to build hundreds of new parking spaces. All told, building the Fjord Trail would destroy more than 55 acres of wildlife habitat, add up to 22  acres of impervious surface, and result in half an acre of over-water shading in the Hudson River.

OPRHP’s own projections indicate the project would draw up to 268,000 new visitors annually to the area—bringing total annual visitation to as many as one million people. Seventy-five percent of visitors are expected to arrive by car.

During the environmental review process, hundreds of local residents submitted comments raising serious concerns about the project’s impacts on traffic, noise, environmental degradation, emergency services, and the character of their communities. Their concerns were echoed by local government leaders,  nonprofit organizations—including Riverkeeper, Little Stony Point Citizens Association, and local and state Audubon chapters—and by state agencies themselves, including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

“The state had an obligation to honestly evaluate the impacts of this project on our communities and our environment. Instead, it rubber-stamped a flawed review that ignored the concerns of the people who live here,” said Dave Merandy, president of  Protect the Highlands.

The petition raises a number of causes of action, including that OPRHP (i) failed to take a “hard look” at the adverse impacts of the project, (ii) changed at the last minute vital aspects of the project, including where the trail would start in Cold Spring and how the pilings would be installed to support the elevated walkway, depriving the public of an opportunity to submit comments on those changes, (iii) withheld critical information regarding the project, including a geotechnical report that specifically recommended that the pilings not be installed in the manner that OPRHP ultimately approved and a report showing that there are contaminated soils in the area where the entry to the project trail in Cold Spring is to be constructed, and (iv) failed to require mitigation of the adverse impacts “to the maximum extent practicable” as SEQRA requires. 

Protect the Highlands is represented in the litigation by Whiteman Osterman & Hanna LLP. Senior counsel Philip Gitlen said “It is truly shocking that the storied Scenic Hudson — which was so instrumental in protecting the Hudson Highlands — is now affiliated with a project that threatens the very values that Scenic Hudson fought so hard to protect. Just as overuse in the High Peaks region of the Adirondack Park has detracted from the wild forest values guaranteed by the "forever wild” provisions of the New York constitution, so too does the overuse of recreational resources in the fragile Hudson Highlands threaten the scenic attributes of the Highlands that makes it so attractive for those who live there and visit there.”

Protect the Highlands has consistently advocated for an alternative approach—an upland trail that would achieve the original safety and connectivity goals of the project without the environmental destruction, community disruption, and massive cost of the current shoreline design.

“We are not opposed to improving trail access or pedestrian safety. We are opposed to a project that sacrifices the very things that make this place worth visiting,” said Merandy.

Protect the Highlands’ lawsuit is joined by separate Article 78 proceedings filed by the Village of Cold Spring and the Town of Philipstown, both of which are independently challenging the state’s environmental review of the Fjord Trail project. Together, the three proceedings reflect the depth and breadth of local opposition to the project as approved.

The case is In the Matter of Protect the Highlands, et al. v. N.Y.S.O.P.R.H.P. and H.H.F.T.  in New York State Supreme Court, Albany County.