When Dreams Can Become Nightmares - February 19, 2007

Gambling with the Region’s Future on Casinos and Airports

Michael R. Edelstein, Ph.D.

Recently, in Newburgh and Goshen, amazing open planning workshops occurred to shape visions for Orange County’s future. Momentum toward making our communities sustainable is mounting. As the region’s oldest voice for sustainability, Orange Environment, Inc. is excited by these events. But we must warn about contrary developments that demand attention.

This past week, Orange Environment, Inc. and three other organizations legally challenged the failure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to take a required hard look at the impacts associated with a Mohawk Casino at Monticello Raceway. The Record’s editorial response to the suit was merely to brush it aside as a “desperate” act given that the casino is going to happen, regardless. The editorialist went on to suggest that there are more fruitful avenues to pursue to achieve mitigation for the casino’s impacts, although none were articulated. The Record is shortsighted, naive, and uninformed in its comments. If powerful forces are indeed prepared to ram through the Mohawk casino without addressing or even acknowledging the problems it will cause, as the impending victims of those problems, the last thing we should be doing is behaving like road kill. We need to act now or forever suffer the consequences.

The dream of Catskill casinos promises revitalization while ignoring the disastrous consequences for Orange County and regions south, through which 90% of the some 2 million additional vehicles generated just by the Mohawk casino at Monticello raceway would travel. The Rt. 17 corridor is already at or near capacity without the casino. Orange County is already out of compliance for ozone and particulate matter, even without the additional air pollution. Our EMT, fire and police are already overtaxed by frequent and tragic accidents. Our commercial centers are already becoming overcongested. More traffic is already promised by sprawl, the I-86 conversion, and numerous projects realized or proposed, including more casinos. The brilliant Bethel Woods Arts center, itself generating traffic, already evidenced problems of access even without the raceway casino at its gates. No one—not Orange County nor New York State—has stepped forward to address these issues. Orange Environment, Inc., having spent four years raising these concerns to the BIA, the state, the counties and the public, has long been an advocate of steps that would serve as partial mitigation, including re-creation of Main Line Rail or its bus equivalent, to get traffic off the transit corridor, and an end to sprawl development.

The loophole that allows casinos to be built on off-reservation lands creates circumstances that are frankly beyond the BIA’s normal concern with tribal welfare. The National Environmental Policy Act clearly requires that the welfare of communities adversely impacted by the project be considered, as well. The applicant and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, as lead agency, have a clear legal obligation to assess potential adverse impacts of the project, including cumulative, long term, irretrievable and irreversible and energy-related impacts. They are required to consider reasonable alternatives and to propose mitigation for identified impacts. They have failed. Thus, our appropriate legal challenge.

A parallel scenario is building to achieve the old dream of Stewart as the New York’s fourth metro airport. Enter the Port Authority, an agency with the resources and power to actually push this goal to completion. As plans quickly evolve, it is necessary to assure the same hard look at the cumulative effects of whatever is proposed, to make sure that alternatives are assessed and mitigation is in effect.

The belief that Stewart will save the Mid-Hudson is as deep as the belief that casinos will save the Catskills. Our obligation is to proceed so that our fondest dreams do not in reality become nightmares.