After spending a substantive effort to collect all the public records related to the wetlands on the Patrick Farm property, ROSA reviewed of all these records paying attention to the communication with the Army Corps of Engineers.

ROSA has determined that the developer of the proposed multi-family development at the Patrick Farm never received a Jurisdictional Determination from the Army Corps of Engineers for the 497 home development project; such a determination would confirm the Waters of the United States in addition to related wetlands on the property that would be subject to federal protection.

This finding is significant because when defining the scope of the Environmental Impact Study of the proposed project on the property, the Town of Ramapo – as lead agency for the SEQRA review – correctly required that this determination be made:

“Delineate and flag the boundary of all State and Federal Jurisdictional Wetlands in accordance with the methology provided in teh 1987 Army Corpos of Engineers Wetlands Delineation Manual and later editions; boundaries to be confirmed by the permit agencies.” (Exhibit 1, page 5 item C3b)

Neither the DEIS nor the FEIS included the federal jurisdictional determination because it did not exist. In fact the applicant misrepresented having obtained a determination in the written materials that were presented.

The details of this analysis and the original source material was pulled together into a letter which was submitted by  Susan Shapiro (who is an attorney who has been representing her parents who live adjacent to the property) to the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE – 2012-11-15 Letter to Richard Tomer) last month.  Chief Tomer has retired this year and been replaced but ROSA has been pursuing getting a confirmation of these findings from the current staff.

Today, Friday 12/13, Deborah Munitz received a phone call from an ACOE attorney confirming the ROSA findings and expects a written confirmation in response to her FOIA request for the missing JD.

Please take the time to read the Letter along with the exhibits (see below). This information has been shared with various permitting agencies who are basing their permitting review on the understanding that all Jurisdictional approvals for the property were obtained during the SEQRA process.

Original Source Material

ACOE Exhibit 1 – 2008-06-25 SEQRA Scoping Reqs for Patrick Farm

ACOE Exhibit 2 – Copehaver Aquatic Resouce Maps

ACOE Exhibit 3 – Clouser H3-WetlandDisturbanceMap 2011-12-09

ACOE Exhibit 4 – Clouser Map of Nominated Wetlands of Patrick Farm Map

ACOE Exhibit 5 – ACOE Mallery Memorandum of Record of 2010-04-18

ACOE Exhibit 6 – FEIS Extract Comment 3-3.8

ACOE Exhibit 7 – DEIS Extract from EcoWetlands

ACOE Exhibit 8 – DEIS Figure 3-4 EcoWetlands

ACOE Exhibit 9 – Photos of Undisclosed Wetlands

ACOE Exhibit 10 – 2009-04-02 LJA To NYS DEC Request for JD

ACOE Exhibit 11 – 2009-11-13 NYS DEC Signed Wetland Validation Map

ACOE Exhibit 12 – 2007-02-01 ACOE Letter

ACOE Exhibit 13 – 2008-10-02 SivePaget to ACOE Tomer with Mallery Letter

ACOE Exhibit 14 – Copeland_PatrickFarmWetlandAffidavit

ACOE Exhibit 15 – Clouser_PatrickFarmWetlandAffidavit