Are our tree protections slipping?

The environmentalist

Maybe it’s just me — but each time I drive through the Ohioville hamlet, I feel like I’m watching a slow-motion erasure of the natural New Paltz we all claim to love.

In the last few days alone, two properties have been stripped nearly bare of trees. The first sits at the end of Old 299, now N. Ohioville.That site was approved for a subdivision for a cannabis dispensary called “Farmers Choice” where only a select number of trees were supposed to be removed for a parking area. Instead, the entire landscape has been scraped clean. This is nowhere near what was approved by the Planning Board. The second clear-cut is further down, at 28 N. Ohioville — another sudden expanse of exposed soil where mature trees stood just days ago. I suspect some of this lot is a protected wetland area.

After reaching out to people like the Town’s Director of Zoning and Code Enforcement and planning board members, I learned that while the town is taking action, its hands are tied. Why? Because the Planning Board chose to waive the Tree Survey requirement and declined to require an escrow deposit for the subdivision. That means the developer can violate what was approved… and the Town has almost no leverage to compel compliance.

This is not a small technical oversight. New Paltz’s tree code is clear, rational, and designed exactly for its purpose:

“Any person seeking to cut down, kill, or otherwise destroy or remove a tree… shall submit a complete application… [to] be delivered to the Chairperson of the Environmental Conservation Board.”

Applications must include who the applicant is, where the tree removal is located, a real site plan and critically a survey of the number and type of trees to be removed. And fees must be paid up front unless the Environmental Conservation Board explicitly waives them for cause.

These steps exist for a reason: to prevent exactly the kind of environmental damage now happening in Ohioville.

But in these cases, none of that happened.
Why? Because the Planning Board chose to waive our environmental protections, despite having no obligation to do so.

And here’s where we have a deeper systemic issue:

The Town Planning Board is dominated by members with development or commercial interests in New Paltz. That doesn’t mean they are ill-intentioned — but it does mean they consistently default toward developer convenience over environmental protection. In both of these cases, the Environmental Conservation Board was never even consulted, even though the town code explicitly makes them a required part of ALL tree-removal processes.

So now the trees are gone, the habitat is gone, the wetland damaged, the ecological function of those landscapes is gone — and we’re told there’s “not much we can do.”

This is what happens when oversight is treated as optional.

This is what happens when our environmental protections are waived for speed, convenience or just to seem like ‘good guys’ to your developer mates.

This is what happens when the boards responsible for defending our natural environment are sidestepped.

And let’s be clear:
This isn’t just about “a few trees.” It’s about wetlands, floodplains, wildlife corridors, carbon sequestration, noise buffering, resilience against future storms, and the character of our rural landscape. New Paltz cannot meaningfully claim to be a community that values nature while allowing developers to clear-cut first and ask permission later.

We must demand alignment between our environmental values and our land-use decisions.

We need:

• A Planning Board that automatically refers tree-removal, sub-divisions and land-disturbance applications to the Environmental Conservation Board.

• Mandatory tree surveys — not optional, not waivable because a developer asks nicely.

• Escrow deposits required for any land-disturbing activity to ensure compliance.

• Real enforcement mechanisms with real consequences.

• And above all, a culture of governance that recognizes what every ecologist already knows: once you cut a forest down, you can’t just replace it with a plan.

New Paltz’s environmental code exists because residents fought for it — to protect our wetlands, our stream corridors, our canopy, our biodiversity, and our sense of place. Those laws mean nothing if boards ignore them.

We deserve better than “too late — the trees are already gone.”

We deserve a town that takes its environmental responsibilities seriously.

And we absolutely deserve local boards who follow the code they swore to uphold.