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Anglebrook
v. City of New York
On Friday, April 13, 1995 the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, by the Honorable Barrington D. Parker, Jr., District Judge, rendered a 43 page decision dismissing in all respects a lawsuit by the City of New York against Anglebrook Limited Partnership in which the City sought to prevent Anglebrook from constructing a golf course on a 240 acre site which it owns in the Town of Somers, New York.
The thrust of the
City's lawsuit was that construction and operation of the Golf Course
would harm the City's reservoirs, located more than 2-1/2 miles downstream
of the Golf Course. In dismissing the City's lawsuit, the Court noted
that before commencing this case the City had, since 1991, unsuccessfully
litigated the adequacy of Anglebrook's plans in various environmental
proceedings and that the project had previously experienced a full environmental
review pursuant ot he New York State Environmental Quality Review Act.
The Court held that "considered as a whole, the SWPPP {referring
to Anglebrook's Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan} is a carefully
conceived plan that falls well within the boundaries of good engineering
design judgment," and that it provides adequate measures for maintaining
stormwater quality. The Court noted that "Defendants ahve sufficiently
guarded the watershed from deterioration with detailed structural and
backup measures, buttressed by moitoring and inspection to ensure compliance."
In denying the City’s
request for an injunction, the court found that the City had failed to
prove that Defendants’ activities would cause any discharge of pollutants
into the Amawalk and Muscoot Reservoirs or that anything Defendants proposed
to do would impair the City’s drinking water.
The City’s lawsuit, which was commenced in October of 1994, has had the effect of delaying Golf course construction for approximately six months and followed a previous unsuccessful attempt by the City to scuttle the project in a proceeding before the new York Freshwater Wetlands Appeals Board. The Golf Course project itself first came before the Somers Planning Board in February of 1990 and was the subject of extensive review by the Somers Planning Board, the Somers Zoning Board of Appeals, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the New York State Freshwater Wetlands Appeals Board, the U.S.. Army Corps of Engineers, and finally, the United States District Court, all of which found that the City’s oft repeated complaints about the Golf Course to the be entirely without foundation. (See: 58 F.3rd 35, 891 F.Supp.908)
