Submit your own comment:

The most impactful way to contribute to the public comment period is by submitting your own comment. All comments and questions submitted to New York State have to be reviewed and answered.

Statements that are personally relevant and factually informed make great public comments. To get started, think for a moment about how your life and the community in which you live would be impacted by the Fjord Trail. If built as currently conceived, the Fjord Trail would touch every aspect of our local communities. It would threaten the character of our towns and our quality of life with years of heavy construction. It would bring more traffic, straining the limited carrying capacity of our two-lane roads. It would pave over parkland and fragment fragile habitats used by protected species of wildlife. It would impact how our tax dollars are spent and the response capacity of our local emergency services. The DGEIS touches upon all these impacts—and more.

Tips for reading the DGEIS:

• Start by reading the Executive Summary, which will help you familiarize yourself with the main ideas of the DGEIS. The DGEIS is extremely repetitive between sections, and you can skim over many of the pages.

• Review the table of contents or individual chapter headings to familiarize yourself with the overall structure of the DGEIS. From there, you can dive into sections that are most relevant to your individual concerns.

• Take notes as you read and identify sections to reference in your comment.

• Run keyword searches in the full DGEIS and compiled DGEIS appendices using place names (such as “Dockside,” “Dutchess Junction,” and “Washburn”), terms (such as “construction,” “traffic,” and “bathroom”), and specific species of wildlife (such as “New England cottontail” and “cerulean warbler”).

• Immediately below is a link to individual sections of the DGEIS, which New York State uploaded to make navigating and reading the DGEIS easier. Breaking the DGEIS into chapters and sections makes it easier to identify, read about, and comment on the topics that relate to your interests. The sections were taken in whole exactly as they appear in the DGEIS, and all sections of the DGEIS are included.

Tips for drafting a comment:

• Make comments fact-based and include citations to specific parts of the DGEIS, rather than relying exclusively on emotion or personal experience. (For example, if you are interested in Scenic Resources and read their rationale for why they think building the elevated boardwalk will not result in significant adverse impacts to the visual character of the Fjord Trail South corridor, it would be good to reference the fifth paragraph of Chapter IV.G-1-A: Introduction.)

• Focus on major issues, not on problems with wording or minor discrepancies. 

• Consider whether studies conducted and other sources cited in the DGEIS are adequate to support the analyses and conclusions reported in the DGEIS. Identify deficiencies in the discussions of potential impacts, alternatives, or mitigation, and suggest additional or more appropriate studies or sources to augment the deficient discussions.

• Give careful attention to the comparative assessment of alternatives presented in the DGEIS and, if they can be identified, offer reasonable alternatives. 

• Review all mitigation measures that are analyzed and, to the extent possible, suggest additional reasonable measures to reduce adverse environmental impacts.

• Ensure that comments focus on relevant potential environmental impacts of a project and are not merely expressions of support or opposition.

• Comments do not need to be in question form.

Writing assistance and editing:

If you would like any assistance with your comment—for example, if you have a question about a particular section of the DGEIS or would just like someone to copy edit your writing for grammar, typos, etc.—we’d be glad to help. We can be reached at info@protectthehighlands.org. Please contact us!

Deadline to submit:

March 4, 2025 at 5:00 pm – Submit a written comment on or before Tuesday, March 4 at 5:00 pm. Comments received during the comment period can be reviewed and mitigated by the applicant during the review itself. Therefore, submit your comment as close to the deadline as you are reasonably able.