ALBANY – A state appeals
court has affirmed a Supreme Court ruling that the Village of Kiryas Joel
may drill a water well in Mountainville in the Town of Cornwall. The state
Department of Environmental Conservation had granted approval for the
project to provide a backup water supply to KJ. It maintaining the village
complied with all studies and permits to demonstrate that its withdrawal
of up to 612,000 gallons of water per day would have no negative impact
on the water supplies of neighboring communities.
The village had been building a 13-mile-long pipeline to tap into a New
York City aqueduct, but it had to demonstrate that it had a backup source
in the vent aqueduct water was unavailable.
Supreme Court in Albany earlier dismissed an Article 78 challenge to the
DEC decision, seeking to have it voided. In a 10-page decision dated October
26, the Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department affirmed the lower
court’s decision.
In its ruling the appeals court agreed with the Supreme Court that “DEC
reviewed the significant documentation submitted with the application,
conducted a public hearing and considered both the submitted comments
and the responses offered by Kiryas Joel… DEC largely agreed with
Kiryas Joel’s responses, and, indeed ‘accept[ed] and incorporate[d]’
the bulk of them into its own responses.”
The appeals court wrote that the DEC cited a pump test that determined
the proposed maximum daily water withdrawal from the well “would
have no impact upon the water supply of others and would not harm the
aquifer or other natural resources.”
A statement from the Village of Kiryas Joel said it hopes that “the
comprehensiveness of this decision might bring an end to the vicious cycle
of litigation. All involved municipalities have spent millions of dollars
in taxpayer money to fight and litigate numerous issues against Kiryas
Joel including claims against the annexation, water pipeline, water wells,
sewer, etc.”
Village Administrator Gedalye Szegedin said KJ is “ready and willing
to meet, negotiate and settle issues outside of court just as we did with
our neighbors in Monroe and the United Monroe organization. Going forward,
we prefer to pursue the path of diplomacy; let’s establish a department
of state instead of a department of war.”
