Hudsonia will conduct study of Sepasco Lake

The Town Board has agreed to move forward with a study of Sepasco Lake to determine whether it should be designated a Critical Environmental Area.

An agreement to pay the environmental group Hudsonia $4,200 to complete the study was approved during a board meeting Monday evening. Town officials noted a public hearing will be required before an environmental impact designation can be made.

“[Hudsonia] would need to give us the information that the town would need to determine that the CEA (Critical Environmental Area) has exceptional or unique character under the statute,” Town Attorney Warren Replansky said.

If the designation if approved, any project involving the site that ordinarily would be considered an “unlisted” action under the State Environmental Quality Review Act instead would be reviewed as a Type 1 action, requiring a more detailed review.

Hudsonia, in a preliminary report, said its study would involve three people conducting field surveys via canoe trips to review plant and animal life at the lake. The study would include laboratory identification of specimens, mapping of habitats, and analysis of ecologically sensitive areas within 500 meters around

the lake.

Property owners have raised concerns that the designation would add heightened scrutiny to some projects they commonly undertake around the private lake, which is about a halfmile long and 400 feet and sits off state Route 308.

Town officials, though, said landowner activities that would not require additional environmental reviews would include routine construction, enhancement of structures, or landscaping alterations.

“A CEA designation does not automatically restrict any activities within or adjacent to it boundaries,” town officials wrote to the property owners. “The only additional requirement for landowners within or contiguous to a CEA is that they must complete the long-form version of an environmental impact statement for activities designated as unlisted actions ... [for] nonresidential projects physically altering fewer than 10 acres of land; subdivision of existing regulations, ordinances, local laws, and resolutions that may affect the environment.”

Town Conservation Advisory

Board Chairwoman Corinna Borden said concerns by neighboring property owners were addressed by emphasizing the benefits of the Critical Environmental Area designation.

“It formalizes the importance of Sepasco Lake,” she said. “A biodiversity assessment will be very helpful for people who are already doing studies of the lake to have a baseline of what’s going on. They’re already utilizing their own homeowners’ association to study the lake to figure out what’s going on because they have invasive species that come in and clear out once in a while. So [they’ll] have a biodiversity assessment.”