BREAKING: PACE REPORT FINDS COAST GUARD IN VIOLATION; SERINO JOINS CALL FOR REPEAL OF BARGE PLAN

                         BREAKING: PACE REPORT FINDS COAST GUARD IN VILOATION; SERINO JOINS CALL FOR REPEAL OF BARGE PLAN

SLEEPY HOLLOW, NY—In light of a bombshell report released by Pace University’s Environmental Policy Clinic, Senator Sue Serino (R, C, I—Hyde Park) today joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers to call on the U.S. Coast Guard to rescind their current proposal to establish new anchorage points along the Hudson River.

In a letter to Admiral Paul F. Zukunft, Commandant, United States Coast Guard, the Environmental Policy Clinic charges that the Coast Guard—in putting forth the anchorage proposal—actually violated its own established policy procedures as laid out in its Waterways Management (WWM): Anchorage Management Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTP) (CGTTP 3-71.2 July 2015) guide. The Clinic argues that the Coast Guard is required to expressly seek input from relevant community stakeholders and undergo critical safety and environmental studies before publishing their Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) in the Federal Register. To date, there has been no evidence to indicate that the Coast Guard followed through on these established procedures.

In fact, the Coast Guard has remained largely silent on the proposal since it was put forth earlier this year. Senator Serino has joined with Senators Terrence Murphy and David Carlucci, and countless local representatives, on numerous occasions to call on the Coast Guard to hold public hearings throughout the affected communities so that residents can get critical answers to their various questions on the plan. To date, no such hearing has been set, although Senators Serino, Murphy and Carlucci took the initiative in October to hold their own public hearing in hopes of soliciting a response from the Coast Guard and to draw public attention to the plan.

Today, at a press conference in Kingsland Point Park in Sleepy Hollow, Senator Serino expressed her incredible disappointment and made her position clear saying,

“First and foremost, I think we can all agree that we have the utmost respect for the U.S. Coast Guard, and if the Coast Guard has identified a safety issue along the Hudson, we are eager to work with them to address it.

Through it's silence and lack of transparency throughout this entire process, the Coast Guard has shown that it simply does not hold our communities—the ones that stand to be directly impacted by their current proposal—in the same regard.

To find out that they have even gone so far as to violate their own established protocol in putting the proposal forward is not only frustrating, it’s incredibly disappointing.

Today, I join my colleagues to call on the Coast Guard to finally scrap their current plan and urge them to begin to work alongside our local communities to find solutions that improve river safety without negatively impacting the economy, the environment or the quality of life of the communities along the Hudson.

Thanks to the vocal advocacy of community members and Senator Serino, the original deadline to submit public comment on the proposal was extended to tomorrow, Tuesday, December 6^th. As of this morning, over 8,000 comments have already been submitted. To add your voice before the comment period is closed at midnight tomorrow, visit https://www.regulations.gov/docket?D=USCG-2016-0132.

For more information from the Pace University Environmental Policy Clinic on the issue, click here.

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