FISHKILL – Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, Inc. (HHFT) says the DGEIS public comment period for the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail has been shifted by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation to early fall 2024 to allow for thorough data collection and review by affected municipalities, including Fishkill, Beacon, and Cold Spring. The data collection includes pedestrian counts, traffic study, and visitation projections for the trail.
This timing will better align with the completion of the work of the Visitation Data Committee (VDC) in preparing local municipal boards for their review of the Draft Generic Environmental Impact Statement (DGEIS) during the public comment period.
The Visitation Data Committee was formed to project area communities to get early review and analysis of the collected data.
Each municipality in the project area has representation on the committee, as does the Village of Nelsonville. The Villages of Cold Spring and Nelsonville have the most representation per capita. The scope of the committee’s work is to objectively review and help refine analysis — as appropriate to professional standards of practice — of each of these data topics, ultimately helping inform each respective municipality to make official comments as Interested/Involved Agencies during the DGEIS public comment period.
As part of the VDC process outlined by HHFT, the volunteer municipal appointees work with a professional planning consultant, BFJ Planning (BFJ), who was independently selected by the volunteer municipal appointees. The role of BFJ is to aid the municipal appointees in their review of data gathered and presented by HHFT’s planning and visitation management consultants and to help clarify technical points and share industry best practice guidelines.
After additional appointments to the committee from the City of Beacon and the Town of Fishkill, VDC meetings resumed on June 5 with an onboarding session for new members. The VDC process will continue through August.
Once the projection is reviewed and accepted to the satisfaction of the majority of the committee, it will be released to the public.
