A coalition of East End environmental and civic groups, led by the Group for the East End, is warning that proposed changes to the State Environmental Quality Review Act in Gov. Kathy Hochul’s 2026 budget bill could undermine local control and clear the way for large-scale development without meaningful environmental review.

The governor’s proposal, called ‘Let Them Build,’ aims to speed housing construction by streamlining New York’s environmental review law, and could exempt certain projects, including those on “previously disturbed” land or with existing water and sewer connections, from SEQRA review, while imposing new deadlines on those that remain.

But critics say the changes are far broader than they appear, potentially allowing a wide range of development to move forward without the environmental analysis or public input that has long governed growth on the East End.

In a letter to the governor opposing the plan (below), the coalition argues that exempting entire categories of projects from review would “undermine SEQRA’s core principles, including transparency, disclosure, public engagement, and the consideration of impact-mitigating alternatives,” replacing a system built on scrutiny with one that allows big decisions to unfold largely out of public view.

SEQRA is a 1975 New York law that requires state and local agencies to conduct a coordinated assessment of the environmental, social and economic impacts of proposed development projects before approving them.

The law has often frustrated local builders, who say it can add years of delay, significant legal and consulting costs and uncertainty to projects, sometimes over issues they believe to be minor or duplicative.

Efforts over several days to reach officials from the Long Island Builders Institute for comment on Hochul’s proposal, and the environmental groups’ opposition to it, were unsuccessful.

Reached over the weekend, North Fork housing advocate Dinni Gordon, chair of Greenport’s Affordable and Workforce Housing Committee, said she was not fully versed on the specifics of Hochul’s plan, but that, generally speaking, “SEQRA is terribly important and should be an issue for every housing proposal, no matter how small or large.”

Tom McCarthy, a real estate agent and lifelong North Forker who represents Southold on the Suffolk County Planning Commission, is skeptical too.

“I think it’s really difficult for a one size fits all [approach],” he said.

“Our sole source aquifer, groundwater protections and environmental protection are so important to the entire culture on the East End. Just throwing them away would be silly.”

The governor’s proposal is the second in recent years to seek to override local zoning laws in an effort to combat the state’s housing crisis, particularly the dearth of affordable housing — an issue that has vexed North Fork officials for years.

In January, 2023, Hochul set forth the New York Housing Compact, which sought to build 800,000 new homes statewide in a decade. It included a proposal that would have mandated higher-density, transit-oriented housing near railroad stations and major public transportation hubs, overriding local zoning in some communities. Following intense resistance from suburban lawmakers, the plan was abandoned.

‘Previously disturbed’

Key to the concerns of ‘Let Them Build’ critics is a new, loosely defined category, “previously disturbed” land, that would allow certain projects to bypass SEQRA review entirely. They contend that the language is so broad that it could be applied to much of the East End, eliminating requirements to analyze environmental impacts, infrastructure demands or community character before development moves forward.

“After almost 400 years of people living here … you’d be hard pressed to find a spot in Southold that hasn’t been ‘previously disturbed,’” Southold Town Supervisor Al Krupski told the Sun last week.

Under the measure, a 100-acre parcel containing a single house, a few outbuildings and some cleared lawn could be deemed “substantially altered,” and could allow a 100-unit residential project to move forward without any comprehensive environmental review, according to Group for the East End president Bob DeLuca, who penned the letter to the governor.  

Farmland could also become vulnerable under the same logic. The plan would allow properties that have not been actively farmed for three of the past five years to qualify for exemption from a SEQRA review, a threshold critics say could be easily manipulated.

The proposed changes raise the possibility “that prime agricultural land could be pulled out of production for just a few years to then qualify for a complete exemption for any SEQRA review for a large-scale second home development,” DeLuca argues in the letter.

Even intensively managed landscapes that still function as open space, like golf courses, could be swept into the same category. Because the measure includes “maintained lawns” and other non-vegetated areas in its definition of disturbance, a sprawling course could potentially be converted into a dense condominium development without triggering a SEQRA review, as long as it lies outside a designated floodplain.

‘Trojan horse’

In an interview last week, DeLuca described the proposal as the most sweeping erosion of environmental review he has seen in decades, both in scope and in how it is being advanced.

“We have plenty of luxury homes out here, but that’s what’s going to get built” under the governor’s plan, he said. “If people can come in and make the argument that SEQRA doesn’t apply to them, then the community is cut out.”

Unlike prior revisions to SEQRA, which went through formal regulatory review with public hearings and impact analysis, this one is being embedded in the state budget, effectively limiting public awareness and input.

“In its simplest terms,” DeLuca said, the Hochul proposal would “pave the way for more market rate development, which, out here, is anything but affordable. It’s the exact opposite effect.”

He called the affordability argument a “Trojan horse,” and said that the changes would primarily benefit developers seeking to build high-end housing, not the workforce or attainable units that are in such short supply on the North Fork.

The vague definition of “previously disturbed” land is a major concern.

“Once you open the door,” he said, lawyers will make increasingly “creative arguments,” pressuring local boards.

“’Previously disturbed’ property, or ‘substantially disturbed’… these kind of vagaries are what give developers’ attorneys a great deal of latitude to persuade a board that ‘this must be what they meant.’ These are lay boards, by and large. Most of the people on these boards are not land use attorneys. They have some counsel from the various towns, but they’re officials.”

‘Core principles’

DeLuca said that the long-term consequence is that communities would lose the ability to evaluate the true costs of development, from infrastructure to emergency services, leaving towns to absorb those burdens later and “pick up the mess.”

Hochul’s proposal “fails to distinguish or specify how any of the proposed review exemptions will advance the cause of housing affordability,” instead leaving “the door open for any number of market-rate or luxury development projects” to proceed without meaningful oversight.

DeLuca said GFEE and the other groups who signed the letter are not opposed to affordable or workforce housing, and that in other parts of the state this plan could be a catalyst for real affordable housing, but not on the East End, where it would just mean more luxury developments.

One aspect of the plan that most parties appear to support is new proposed time limit of two years to complete a SEQRA review. There is currently no time limit in place.

“[We] would have a much different point of view if [Albany] said, ‘Listen, for specific affordable projects that are in a particular town, of a particular size that have gone through whatever analysis the town needs to do, we’re going to reduce the environmental review here,’” DeLuca said.

McCarthy also wants to see a time limit imposed on all SEQRA reviews.

“When you compare New York to other areas of the country, two years to just complete an environmental review seems to be an inordinate amount of time,” he said. “So you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘is the process designed to slow down change, or can it be used to slow down change?”