PLEASANTVILLE – The Environmental Policy Clinic of the Dyson College Department of Environmental Studies and Science at Pace University, Monday, charged the Coast Guard with circumventing its own procedures to the benefit of the shipping industry when the agency launched a proposal to create 43 anchorages for oil barges in the Hudson River. The shipping industry requested the anchorages.
Pace students in the Clinic sent a letter to Coast Guard Commandant Paul Zukunft calling for the immediate withdrawal of the proposal as the only way to initiate the agency’s proper procedures.
The Clinic maintains that before publishing the Advanced Notice for Proposed Rulemaking, the Coast Guard should have completed two major studies addressing river hazards and impacts, conducted public sessions with mariners, environmental groups, and government, and provided all members of the public the opportunity to change the proposal, or even prove it unnecessary.
“This is one of the most egregious violations of public transparency and public trust I have seen in four decades working on Hudson River issues,” said John Cronin, senior fellow at the Dyson College Institute for Sustainability and the Environment at Pace. He said he “suspects the Coast Guard knew the proposal would not survive the level of public scrutiny its own procedures require.”
State Senator Susan Serino (R, Hyde Park) was also critical of the Coast Guard. She said the agency has shown a “lack of transparency throughout the entire process.”
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