Participating In Tomorrow's DEC Hearings?Want To Send An Email? Use This.

A free guide for those who want to participate, but aren't sure what to say to the DEC.

Update 4/3 at 7:51pm:

The virtual hearings have ended! Here is my brief recap of the 2pm call.

Don’t worry though. If you missed these hearings, I have some great news. The DEC extended the public comment period. You now have until April 8th to send an email to DEP.R3@dec.ny.gov

Make sure to address your emails to Mrs. O’Malley.

You can use the subject line: The DEC Should Reject All Permits For Keen Equities LLC

I’ve left the original post below as it was before the hearings, but have made some minor tweaks. You can read my final letter to the DEC here. This letter sums up the entire case against Keen Equities LLC and their criminal associates.

What Can You Email to the DEC?

Try these talking points. Mix and match your favorites. Use your own. The choice is yours!

Dear Mrs. O’Malley,

Talking Point 1: 600 single family homes does not, in any way, ease New York State’s housing crisis. The only true solution to ending New York’s housing crisis is through building affordable, high density housing in an environmentally friendly fashion. According to Realtor.com, if only single family homes are built, it would take just over seven million of them to end our national housing crisis. I’m not a mathematical genius, but I know that 600 single family homes is nowhere close to 7.2 million. Therefore, the claim made in both Clovewood’s FEIS (Final Environmental Impact Statement) and by the developer’s supporters during April 3rd’s Public Hearings are patently false and willfully misleading.

Talking Point 2: Since 2019, South Blooming Grove has operated under tight water restrictions. So has the neighboring community in Woodbury, which is why a building moratorium was implemented there. In Monroe, also next door to South Blooming Grove, major investments are urgently needed in the Moodna sewer district in order to keep it operational. In the Town of Palm Tree, a multimillion dollar pipeline was needed to be built in order to access New York City’s water supply. This was done to meet the needs of the town due to the lack of adequate water in this area. Simply put, there is not enough water in Southern Orange County to support the addition of 600 single family homes and additional accessory apartments. There is also not enough infrastructure in Southern Orange County at this time, to safely and effectively manage the amount of sewage created by this project. If you don’t want to take my word for it, I respectfully ask you to speak to Orange County’s Department of Health and the letters that were sent to The South Blooming Grove Village Board stating as much. (You can all see the letter here)

Talking Point 3: Although Clovewood claims to build additional sewage treatment capacity, it’s important to highlight the impact of the sewage discharge from this project on Satterly Creek. Many residents use the creek for drinking water, agriculture, and recreation. The Creeks support much of our region’s land and water biodiversity. The permit as currently written would allow for an average of 256,760 gpd of treated sewage to be released into the Creeks. I am concerned that this discharge and anticipated discharges from other large scale developments in the area, such as Prospect Gardens and Prospect Acres, will contaminate our drinking water, make our Creeks unsuitable for agriculture and recreation, and will irreparably harm our sensitive Hudson Valley and Hudson Valley Estuary ecosystem. In the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS), little information is provided concerning the sewage treatment facilities, and the developer and The Village of South Blooming Grove have failed to meet multiple deadlines from the Orange County Department of Health to share more information on the impact this sewage — not to mention the additional water needs — would have on existing infrastructure.

Talking Point 4: DEC’s DEE-16 Policy guidance repeatedly references the Department’s authority to revoke permits in situations where the permittee or applicant is “unsuitable,” i.e., a bad actor. I believe the repeated, willful violations of Keen Equities LLC following the issuance of the consent decree and stop work order, qualify Keen Equities as a bad actor. While I do not have the time today to list all of the actions taken by Keen Equities, I will provide you with one critical incident that followed after the DEC requested that all work be stopped at the Clovewood property. In the case of Guilmar Montufar v. Keen Equities, a lawsuit filed in Kings County, Mr. Montufar, a worker for Keen Equities and their associated companies, suffered permanent injury while working on the site. This injury was suffered by Mr. Montufar months after the DEC issued their stop work order at Clovewood. I mention this case because it illustrates the wanton disregard of Keen Equities to follow the rules and guidance of the DEC, and the laws of New York State. For this reason, I am requesting that all permits granted to Keen Equities LLC be revoked, and requests for future permits be denied.

Talking Point 5 (and my personal favorite): DEC’s DEE-16 Policy guidance states that the organization is “command[ed]” by the legislature to “take reasonable steps to ensure that the applicant is a fit and proper person to engage in the permitted . . . activity.” To that end, the policy creates uniform guidance to address “whether the Department should issue permits . . . to persons who have acted in violation of the laws of New York State.”

This guidance enumerates factors to consider as a basis for exercising DEC’s discretion in revoking a permit. These factors include, inter alia, whether, in the last 10 years, the permittee or applicant has “engaged in conduct that constitutes fraud or deceit . . . in the permit application or supporting papers or in the conduct of the permitted activity.”

The DEC has been supplied with information that speaks to the criminal behavior, as well as fraud and deceit, by Keen Equities LLC. To highlight only one instance for the sake of brevity, I’d like to point to the following:

Jacob Gold is the second largest investor in Keen Equities LLC. He is also the president of a company known as Windsor Global. Mr. Joel Stern, Confidential Assistant to the Village of South Blooming Grove Mayor, is the Chief Operating Officer of Windsor Global. Y.C. Rubin, the manager for Keen Equities LLC, is also an employee of Windsor Global. Windsor Global was subject to numerous enforcement actions by the state of New Jersey concerning environmental negligence and other unlawful acts at their property on 601 Lehigh Avenue in Union, New Jersey. At no time was this information disclosed to the DEC, or the public, demonstrating that the permit requests we are discussing today were not made in good faith. In fact, Mr. Stern’s entire campaign of smearing residents of South Blooming Grove as antisemites, as he has done in official government communications from the village in the pages of the Yiddish-language Blooming Grove Report, demonstrates this. Because here we have an employee of the real estate developer, using a government publication, to advocate for the approval of a project his boss stands to gain from financially, over the objection of South Blooming Grove residents. If that doesn’t constitute fraud and deceit under the DEC guidance, I don’t know what does.

(Put this at the end to close things out …)

For these reasons, and numerous others that have been documented online by The Monroe Gazette, no further permits should be granted to this applicant. I further request you revoke all permits granted to Keen Equities LLC due to their demonstrable and verifiable pattern of criminal behavior.

(Put Your Name Here)

P.S. Further detail on the criminal behavior by Keen Equities and their associates can be found here.