Some Background Update...

Hudson National Golf Club and Matrix Development, LLC filed an Application for a Special Permit to install an Industrial Solar Farm on scenic steep slopes overlooking the Hudson River over 2 years ago.  On its face, there is much about this Solar Farm project that would have justified denial shortly after the Application was filed. It is primarily for the financial and energy benefit of HNGC and Matrix,  yet detrimental in so many ways to this Village, its residents and natural resources.  It is not "Green" and violates our Village's essential environmental laws. It is also not consistent with our Comprehensive Plan, and is an attempt to extinguish the previously agreed-to No Disturbance restrictive covenant relating to the proposed Solar Farm site. That valid and existing covenant was intended to ensure that the land would remain untouched to develop and exist as a forest and wildlife habitat, and was a condition of HNGC being granted its original permit by Croton-on-Hudson over 22 years ago! 

Much was tainted about the process over the 18+ months it was before the Village Board.  HNGC's Application contained numerous false and misleading statements and misrepresentations. The outside independent engineering counsultants were not really conducting the "Hard Look" vetting inquiries required and much was mor like a passing glance and a rubber stamp.  The Village Attorney had a conflict of interest having formerly represented HNGC on directly related matters in Croton and the level of legal representation was noticeably compromised by that.  On 1/31/22 in a surprise and unprecedented move indicated that HNGC could resubmit its Application on a different form (FullEAF).  Since that time the Village Board did not take action to Deny the Application, nor did HNGC resubmit on the longer form.  It has been in a state of unprecedented suspense.  Then last week notification came of this new development.  

 

A New and Concerning Development – What Exactly Is the Scope of the Entire Project?

HNGC now intends to close down its golf course for at least a year (starting just after July, 2023) to totally replace its irrigation system, rebuild and restore the bunkers and rebuild all the greens, including restoration of all turf, which will include work within and around the 120’ buffer zones of its wetlands (the alleged narrowly specific reason for this particular permit).  However, it appears that some fairly extensive work might be anticipated.

 

 Input from multiple people has been obtained and, already, multiple stories about the scope of the work are being told, from mere repairing, refurbishing, restoring, and renovating to complete rebuilding!  Of course, what has been learned the hard way from history is that there is always the possibility that HNGC could go totally off-script, as has been known to happen in the past, and even unrelated work could transpire with unintended dire consequences.

 

 What is known is that whatever the true nature and scope of the work, it will necessitate HNGC being closed down for a likely period of over a year.  Keeping in mind the requested 7 acres and hundreds of trees slated for clearcutting that were being proposed and strongly opposed in connection with the still pending HNGC/Matrix Solar Farm Project which is still in its unprecedented suspended state… there is understandable reason for concern!

 

Same Personnel + Same Tricks = Same Problems!

Not surprisingly, the NY State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) documents filed on behalf of HNGC for this Wetlands Permit were filed by the same Engineer who filed most of the documents in connection with the HNGC/Matrix Solar Project which contained numerous false and misleading statements, misrepresentations and deceptive presentations and information.

 In those Wetlands Permit documents, he description of the work that is to take place during this year-long project is not a complete rip out and replacement with a new system, but described as encompassing merely “repairs” and “refurbishing” to take place on HNGC’s “existing” irrigation system!  The number of acres that will likely be disturbed is also greatly minimized.

 

Also of great concern is that the notice that was sent out announcing this meeting indicates the name of the same Village Attorney who has a conflict of interest by virtue of having been HNGC’s former counsel representing it in connection with “matters directly related” to those at issue now and who has provided her current clients, the Village Board, with blatantly compromised representation in connection with the HNGC/Matrix Solar Project.  

 

That has included, among a number of other things, giving her clients false and misleading as advice as to what NY Law and SEQRA allow and require in the review process, in direct contravention of the requirements of NY Attorney Rules of Professional Conduct, and which have detrimentally contributed to the very flawed process that has taken place in connection with that Application thus far.

 

The inclusion of these two individuals indicates that, to date, the Mayor and Village Board have taken no action to address the significant conflicts of interest and ethical issues that have plagued and compromised the HNGC/Matrix Solar Project Special Permit Application for over 2 years. With this Attorney’s and Engineer’s continued participation in these roles, the integrity of the review of this newly filed HNGC Application for a Wetlands Permit will likely be similarly tainted.

 

It could also even be used by HNGC to accomplish some of the goals it had as part of its Solar Project, such as the cutting of large areas of trees in violation of our Tree Law, Steep Slopes Law and the No Disturbance restrictive covenant that HNGC entered into while our Village Attorney (as its former counsel) had been representing the interests of HNGC and which HNGC now wants to ignore and have lifted in order to be able to go forward with its Solar Farm project… an argument that their former counsel, now the Village Attorney, wholeheartedly seems to support, although not in the best interests of Croton!   

 

Planning Board is Needed Because Mayor and Village Board Failed Us When It Counted!

 As such, Croton residents would be looking to the Planning Board for its experienced oversight and close scrutiny of the Wetlands Permit Application as the Approving Authority, because the HNGC “property” meets the requirement of still being the subject of a pending subdivision and special permit application.

 In addition,  Croton residents would want to be sure that someone from the Village Planning Board will be overseeing all of the work that HNGC will be doing in connection with the entire project that is associated with this requested Wetlands Permit (and not just solely the Wetlands specific work), in order to ensure that all work is not only in compliance with all of the requirements of this Wetlands Permit, but that any additional work outside the scope of this particularly narrow Application do not violate any other local, State or Federal laws or regulations.

  

To date, our Mayor and Village Board have not taken action to address all the many issues that were of great concern regarding how the HNGC/Matrix Solar Project Application for a Special Permit had been mishandled for over 18+ months, now leaving it in a state of unprecedented suspension.  It now awaits the possibility of yet another round because the Village Board also in unprecedented fashion did not yet issue a denial although it had ample grounds to do so, both on the ill-advised and ill-conceived nature of that Solar Farm Project itself, but also due to the numerous false and misleading statements, misrepresentations and deceptive representations that had been submitted and engaged in during the course of the review of that project. Also, an issue was the inadequate rubberstamping type of vetting that was going on by Chazen/La Bella the outside independent engineering consultants, contrary to the “Hard Look” inquiry required pursuant to the guidelines of the SEQRA.

 

Throughout what turned out to be that very compromised SEQRA process, HNGC demonstrated that its goal is to obtain approval for its Solar Project regardless of the detrimental consequences to Croton and its residents. (The whole Solar Farm Project was primarily for the financial and energy benefits of HNGC and Matrix with very little benefit for just 150 Croton homes that might obtain just a 10% discount off of just the supply portion of their energy bills.) That blatant disregard by HNGC for the ultimate consequences to Croton and its residents was also apparent throughout these last 23+ years as HNGC inflicted much flooding, drainage and erosion damage and other harm on the residents of Croton and their properties.

  

Without detailed, complete and accurate disclosures from a truthful engineer, with WCC advised by an unconflicted, uncompromised Village Attorney having no previous ties to HNGC or mandated loyalty to HNGC, and our Village Planning Board giving closely scrutinized oversight of this anticipated nearly year-long project, history has shown that we cannot be assured that the outcome will not be another irreversible disaster for Croton, its Residents and natural resources!  

 

HNGC Has Caused Immense Damage and Amassed Huge Carbon Debt That Needs to Be Repaid!

As a result of much destruction caused throughout these years, Hudson National Golf Club has already amassed a Huge Carbon Debt!  Thousands of trees have been destroyed by HNGC as it moved through decades of violating our environmental laws.  It has been a long history of flagrantly ignoring the “No Disturbance” restrictive covenants it voluntarily agreed to as an absolute condition of being granted its original Special Permit by Croton-on-Hudson that prohibited any disturbance of many of its 280 acres, numerous of which had been covered with woodlands and forests, wildlife habitats and on steep slopes, but now lay bare.  

 

It is a history of HNGC taking what it wanted, when it wanted it.  If bigger and better views and vistas were desired for its Members, then trees were apparently just cut down and sacrificed without a second thought… even without any permits.   Very serious drainage and flooding problems were created and the expensive resulting damage became the problems for HNGC’s Resident and Arboretum neighbors which HNGC just seemed to shrug off... after all, doesn’t all of Croton exist to feed HNGC’s insatiable appetite for more expansive vistas? … to market, play on and enjoy a golf course without all those annoying trees?  The same trees and slopes HNGC had agreed to protect as an explicit condition of its still valid and enforceable original Special Permit.

 

Village Officials Share Culpability by Not Enforcing Laws

HNGC has not been a Good Steward of our environment; but, then again, neither has this Mayor, Village Board or Administration which have been statutorily mandated by State and Local laws to be Stewards of our environment and natural resources for this and future generations.  When we look at the photo above and the images seen on the Google Earth link below of the Hudson National Golf Course in its present state, we need to ask “How did this happen?”  How could our Village officials not know when some, it is said, are known to play golf and have been there on that course?  Why haven’t our existing Tree Laws been used to levy appropriate penalties from HNGC for the devastation that has been inflicted?  Why was there no oversight and scrutiny used in light of existing and ever important restrictive covenants put into place to ensure No Disturbances would take place or the laws that bound it to protect, preserve and conserve invaluable natural and living resources this earth so desperately needs?  

 

And, how could those, including our Mayor, Village Board and Village Attorney, who must have known that what we are now seeing on Google Earth is the reality, just sit there for 2 years listening to, but ignoring, the pleas of Croton residents to save the environment and enforce our laws, while acting like another four, five or six hundred trees that provide habitat to our wildlife, invaluable biodiversity, and do their jobs well producing oxygen and sequestering carbon can just be clear cut and just don’t matter!  

Our Village Officials talk about saving the earth during election campaigns. And then, when they have witnessed it being destroyed before their eyes, and seem to have done nothing about it, and when the laws put into place to protect against what we are seeing there were ignored… those same Village Officials seem to do nothing!  They just virtue signal and tout their “Tree City” accolades and tell us about their Carbon Positive Projects …while they push to approve the environmentally devastating HNGC Solar Project that will cause immense damage and destruction and release huge amounts of already sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere … all for the primary benefit of HNGC and Matrix!  

 

Hudson National Golf Club Tree Destruction Google Earth

 

This can’t be allowed to continue in the face of this blatant hypocrisy.  Certainly, Hudson National Golf Club has incurred a significant Carbon Debt that it really needs to pay back before it is allowed to incur any more, either in connection with the cutting of 600 trees in their proposed Solar Project or anything else they might have planned as part of their current project requiring this pending Wetlands Permit.  These are the same Wetlands, we must remind Mr. Mastromonaco, their Engineer, that he kept refusing to admit even existed for over many months on those SEQRA forms!  

 

Some accountability must be imposed before any more irreversible damage is caused.  Our Tree Law provides for Penalties which should be imposed for all of those illicitly downed trees.  The Laws should be applied equally and fairly.  All Crotonites know that permits are required and that taking down a tree may require planting 2 or 3 trees.  And that if no permit was obtained there will likely be Penalties.  Why have none been levied against HNGC for all those trees!  

 

And while their Engineer is still tap dancing around how to keep from answering whether there are any “habitats” that he must concede exist or whether there are any “forest” lands “nearby” or “slopes” in excess of “15%” … terms he always seems to find so hard to understand... we again are heading toward being left to bear the burden of HNGC’s shameful legacy of environmental destruction.  

 

One would think that with all the misrepresentation and deception that went on with this Engineer in HNGC’s Solar Farm Application process, with his submission of a View Study that sought to camouflage, rather than to inform, by showing us fields colored “brownish” to indicate placement of “Missing Trees” rather than what residents of Croton and the lower Hudson Valley will actually see when 7 acres of forest are cleared  on very and extremely steep slopes to install Photovoltaic solar panels (that we all know are not “brownish”) and that will be reflecting the glare of the western sun causing visual blight along what is now the scenic Hudson Valley, that some lesson would have been learned.    But apparently not so, as it appears that deceptive tap dance has already started on the EAF and CAF forms that were submitted for HNGC’s Wetlands Permit.  

 

As for the Village Attorney, the Village Board has not only ignored, but has enabled and now appears to be complicit in the manner in which it has and is continuing to handle the severely compromised representation it received from Croton’s Village Attorney (who has a conflict of interest due to her former representation of HNGC on directly related matters).  To date, the Village has not been responsive to the concerns of residents on this issue and just seems to sit by passively pointing to the dubious and still unproduced ‘opinion’ letter from a still unnamed attorney at a still unnamed law firm that Manager Healy attempted to paraphrase.

 

In an exercise in the use of red herrings, Mgr. Healy cites to NY Attorney Rules of Professional Conduct having little to do with the actual facts of this situation and the issues at hand.  The fact that this Administration has, to date, produced NO actual attorney opinion letter, and members of this Administration keep citing to Mgr. Healy’s paraphrased attempt at sounding like a legal “opinion” in a manner as if it is dispositive, as a way to shut down any further conversation on this very serious issue, is also exceedingly concerning.

 

A Significant Course Correction Is Needed!

A significant Course Correction is needed. That cycle needs to be broken.  HNGC has had a long history of abusing the land, being a bad neighbor and a horrible steward of Croton’s environmental resources.  For some reason, our Village Board and the Pugh Administration have been extremely reticent to address the very immediate and serious issues that are confronting our Village and its residents on both an environmental, as well as on the health and safety fronts due to the proposals contained in the HNGC Solar Project … similar issues could also exist as part of the overall project which necessitated HNGC’s latest request for a Wetlands Permit.

 

We believe that it is now up to our Planning Board, which appears to be the appropriate Approving Authority, which by its letter of 2/7/22 to the Village Board does seem to recognize the significant exposure created by the arbitrary and capricious manner in which the Village Board has handled these issues in the past and the resulting flawed process which inherently resulted from an approach imbued with both arrogance and stubbornness when the actual laws, regulations and guidelines were not being followed.  

 

Planning Board Ltr Concerns re Village Board Flawed Handling

 

In addition, as pointed out by the Planning Board, the Village Board had, indeed, ignored the significant false and misleading information submitted by HNGC’s Engineer for over 18+ months.  Now that same HNGC Engineer is still listed, involved and submitting information on behalf of HNGC, and from what we can see is, evidently, up to his old “less-than-straightforward” tricks on this current Wetlands Permit request.   

 

Accountability and Penalties for Past Violations … Oversight and Scrutiny Going Forward … 

Accountability is necessary.  But with all that was left unresolved due to the flippant, arbitrary and capricious way the Village Board and Village Attorney handled the entire HNGC Solar Project Application, to date, lack of transparency appeared to block even the ability to issue a Denial of the HNGC Solar Farm Special Permit Application that was and is fully warranted on a number of grounds.  Instead, we were left with the Village Board extending an unprecedented ‘Mulligan’ to HNGC to give it another try after HNGC and Matrix broke many rules (and laws) the first time around.  

HNGC has had a long history of abusing the land, being a bad neighbor and a horrible steward of Croton’s environmental resources.  For some reason, our Village Board and the Pugh Administration have been extremely reticent to address the very immediate and serious issues that the HNGC Solar Project presents to this Village and its residents both on environmental, as well as on health and safety fronts.  We must still remain vigilant because these issues may still exist within the scope of work intended to be done as part of HNGC’s latest request for a Wetlands Permit.

 

In order for any of these HNGC matters to go forward with any modicum of integrity, these issues of personnel and process need to be addressed as soon as possible, prior to any decisions being made on the recently submitted HNGC Request for a Wetlands Permit, as there are too many unresolved issues having too many implications with far reaching consequences.   We request the following:

1.      That the Planning Board use whatever authority it has to get this matter on the right track by taking steps to ensure that the Planning Board is the Approving Authority on this Wetland Permit request from HNGC;

 

2.      That Ralph Mastromonaco is dismissed as HNGC’s Engineer in this matter and banned from making submissions to this Village on behalf of HNGC or related parties based on past false and misleading submissions to the Village under NYS Engineer Ethics Rules, supported by SEQRA guidelines; 

 

3.      That current Village Attorney Linda Whitehead be removed by recusal or otherwise as Attorney on this HNGC Wetlands Permit request and that she or anyone at her firm or any other attorney who has any relationship with HNGC be prohibited from appearing before the Planning Board on HNGC’s behalf in any matter; and

 

4.      That the Planning Board exercise its ongoing oversight and scrutiny over this HNGC Wetlands Permit Request, as well as HNGC’s entire year-long project of which that is a part, including without limitation the substantive construction and engineering issues, requiring all detailed and complete plans, complete drainage and flooding reports, slope involvement, etc., from HNGC so that the best interests of the Village of Croton, its natural resources, and its residents, as well as the conflicts and ethics issues, are all adequately addressed in accordance with all of our laws.