THE GROUNDS FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION’S DENIAL OF PETITIONER PROPERTY OWNER’S APPLICATION TO PARTICIPATE IN THE BROWNFIELD CLEANUP PLAN WERE IRRATIONAL AND UNREASONABLE (SECOND DEPT).
The Second Department, reversing Supreme Court, determined the petitioner property owner’s application to participate in the Brownfield Cleanup Plan (BCP) should not have been denied by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEP) on the grounds that; (1) the petitioner had already entered an agreement to cleanup the property; and (2) an additional financial burden would be imposed on the state. Both grounds were deemed irrational and unreasonable:
… [T]he DEC’s determination that the public interest would not be served by granting the petitioner’s application because National Grid had already agreed to remediate the site pursuant to the consent order was irrational and unreasonable. We hold, consistent with the determinations reached by several other courts, that a “brownfield site” is not ineligible for acceptance into the BCP “on the ground that it would have been remediated in any event” … . … [A]ny “financial misgivings” (id. at 167) concerning the fiscal impact of a property being accepted into the BCP on the state is irrelevant to the question of whether the public interest would be served by the granting of an application to participate in the BCP. The DEC is not tasked with acting as “a fiscal watchdog” … .
… [T]he DEC’s determination that the site was ineligible for acceptance into the BCP on the ground that it is was “subject to [an] on-going state . . . environmental enforcement action related to the contamination which is at or emanating from the site” is also irrational and unreasonable … . There is no support in the language of the statute ECL 27-1405(2)(e) or in its legislative history for the DEC’s conclusion that the consent order constituted an ongoing enforcement action … . Matter of Wythe Berry, LLC v New York State Dept. of Envtl. Conservation, 2020 NY Slip Op 07076, Second Dept 11-25-2o