New York State Environmental Quality Review (SEQR)

Most development requires that the EIS process (in NY called SEQR) be followed. The developer is required to prepare all the reports at their expense. The process is as follows:

• Submit either a short or long declaration form to a proposed lead agency, e.g. DEC, town planning/zoning board. These may be either positive or negative impact documents.
• The agency will either accept the lead agency role or pass it on to some other agency. They may require a long form if only a short form has been submitted. The lead agency may accept a short negative declaration and end the process.
• Prepare a scope of issues document and hold public hearings.
• Prepare a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and hold public hearings.
• Publish the final EIS

Scoping

The primary goals of scoping are to focus the EIS on potentially significant adverse impacts and to eliminate consideration of those impacts that are irrelevant.. This allows the public to examine the proposal and any environmental  impacts and proposed mitigation. They can suggest other issues that must be covered in the DEIS, e.g. economic, traffic, wetlands, etc. impacts. Scoping  must address the following:

1. a brief description of the proposed action;
2. the potentially significant adverse impacts identified both in the positive declaration and as a result of consultation with the other involved agencies and the public, including and identifying those particular aspects of the environmental setting that may be impacted;
3. the extent and quality of information needed for the preparer to adequately address each impact, including an identification of relevant existing information, and required new information, including the required methodology(ies) for obtaining new information;
4. an initial identification of mitigation measures;
5. the reasonable alternatives to be considered;
6. an identification of the information/data that should be included in an appendix rather than the body of the draft EIS; and,
7. those prominent issues that were raised during scoping and determined to be not relevant or not environmentally significant or that have been adequately addressed in a prior environmental review.