Conservation Advisory Council or Board

New York law specifically enables any municipality to establish a local environmental conservation advisory council (CAC) to advise in the development, management and protection of the municipality�s natural resources. Among the principal duties of a CAC are the preparation of an inventory of the municipality's open space resources and recommendation to the planning board and the governing body of a program for the ecologically-suitable use of such resource areas.

A council may be authorized to accept money or other personal property through gifts, bequests, or other means, to further its work. The local legislative body itself may accept real property in fee, or any lesser interest, for the purposes of this statute. Also, upon written recommendation of the council, the local legislative body may purchase in fee or any lesser interest, through negotiation or by condemnation, such real or personal property as may be needed to fulfill the purposes of the statute.

New York law also provides that if a local environmental conservation council has prepared and submitted to the local legislative body an open area inventory and map which are accepted and approved by the legislative body as the municipality�s open space index, then the local legislative body can redesignate the council as an environmental conservation board. Environmental conservation boards are responsible for reviewing all applications received by the municipality seeking approval for the use or development of any open area listed in the open space index. Such applications might include those made to the building department, the zoning board of appeals, the planning board, or any other administrative body. When such applications are received, the environmental conservation board must, within forty-five days, submit a written report to the body making the application and file a copy of the report with the local legislative body. This report must evaluate the proposed use or development of the open area in terms of the open area planning objectives of the municipality. Further, the report must make recommendations regarding the most appropriate use or development of the open area and may include preferable alternate use proposals consistent with the conservation of such areas.

Conservation Density Subdivision

A large-lot rural subdivision in which the Planning Board may waive the requirement for lot frontage on a public road and permit the construction of private roads to lesser specifications than normally required for Town roads provided that the lots are significantly greater in area than the minimum zoning requirements for the district (e.g. 10 acres in a 3-acre district), open space land is preserved, a conservation easement is imposed to protect the open space land and restrict further subdivision, an open development area is created pursuant to Section 280-a of the Town Law and legal means is provided for the long-term ownership and maintenance of the private roadway.

Conservation Easement

An easement generally granted by the owner of property to the public, that is designed to limit or preclude future development of the property or otherwise conserve the property for the benefit of the public.

Conservation easements are usually negative easements. Examples include restricting development of open land (an open space easement), restricting interference with a scenic view (scenic easement), restricting development in flood-prone areas and restricting the alteration of a building faÆade (faÆade easement). Less commonly, conservation easements may take the form of affirmative easements, such as an easement preserving public rights to continue using hiking trails.

Conservation easements may be acquired by the public by eminent domain, which requires that the landowner be compensated. Alternatively, in circumstances where the conservation easement would not be inconsistent with the intended use of the property by its owner, the owner may be induced to donate the easement to the public with a view toward obtaining a charitable contribution tax deduction and at the same time reducing his real property tax assessment.

Critical Environmental Areas

Environmentally sensitive areas, such as wetlands and stream corridors, and hazardous areas, such as floodplains, upon which development should be prevented or strictly controlled. When critical areas are routinely developed, their unique environmental properties are often destroyed, as when wetlands are filled. In other cases, as when floodplains are developed without special regulation, the damage that is sustained can extend over large areas in the form of flooding. Critical areas may be conserved through such means as government acquisition for conservation or park purposes, or they may be protected by stringent development regulations that can assure their continued ability to function. An example of this might be development permitted only at a very low density, with required retention of natural flora. Regulation for development, however, may not be sufficient to protect some of these areas, requiring that development be prevented. In some recent land use regulations, prime farmland, recreational open space, and historic and archeological sites are also considered to be critical areas because of their rare and unique qualities.

Special controls have also been instituted in local areas via zoning and special area protection ordinances, such as for hillside and wetlands protection, and many jurisdictions and private nonprofit organizations, including local land trusts, have undertaken programs to purchase critical areas to protect them for the future. Under New York environmental quality review regulations, any unlisted action proposed within an area designated as a critical environmental area (CEA) must be treated as a Type I action under the State Environmental Quality Review Act.