70 N.Y.2d 193 | NY | 1987
The clash between the goals of environmental preservation and commercial development of the Pine Bush area of the City of Albany has given rise to this dispute. Plaintiffs-petitioners allege that violations of the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) should render the City’s enactment of three ordinances which open the Pine Bush to commercial development invalid and that the first of the ordinances is vague and constitutes an overbroad delegation of authority. First, we hold that a proceeding alleging SEQRA violations in the enactment of legislation must be commenced within four months of the date of enactment of the ordinance. Thus, the SEQRA challenges to the first two ordinances are untimely. In addition, the cause of action alleging vagueness and an overbroad delegation of authority in the first ordinance, although timely, is not meritorious. We also hold, however, that when an action with potential adverse effects on the environment is part of an integrated project designed to balance conflicting environmental goals within a subsection of a municipality that is ecologically unique, the potential cumulative impact of other proposed or pending projects must be considered pursuant to SEQRA before the action may be approved. Without this consideration, approval of the third ordinance enacted by the City was arbitrary and capricious and must be declared null and void.
I.
The Pine Bush, partially within the City of Albany, contains the only remaining large pine barrens on inland sand dunes in the United States. Its unusual inland sand dune composition is the home of rare plant and animal species such as the endangered Karner Blue Butterfly (ECL 11-0535) which survives on the blue lupine, a plant indigenous only to the pine barren. The record establishes that the Pine Bush has a number of distinct environmental characteristics worthy of protecting.
Recognizing this need for preservation but also desiring to expand commercial development into the area, on March 5,
Plaintiffs-petitioners, a not-for-profit corporation whose purpose is to "promote the preservation of Albany’s unique and beautiful pine barrens”, several of the corporation’s officers, local homeowners’ associations and individual homeowners and taxpayers, commenced this combined declaratory judgment action and article 78 proceeding on March 5, 1985 alleging that various SEQRA violations in the enactment of the challenged ordinances rendered them illegal, that the zone change for Anderson’s property constituted spot zoning, and that the creation of C-PB Commercial-Pine Bush zone involved an improper delegation of authority to the Site Plan Review Board. Special Term granted all the relief requested and declared the ordinances null and void. With respect to the Anderson property in particular, the court held that Common Council’s failure to consider the cumulative impact of other pending developments in the Pine Bush when it reviewed Anderson’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) violated the provisions of SEQRA. Upon reargument, the court ad
The Appellate Division modified. The Third Department agreed that the City’s failure to address the cumulative environmental impact of pending projects in the Pine Bush was fatal to Anderson’s application. However, the court held that the applicable statutory period for challenging SEQRA violations was four months and, thus, held that the second cause of action concerning the creation of the Pine Bush Site Plan Review District was time-barred. The court held that the first cause of action challenging the C-PB Commercial-Pine Bush classification was timely because it had not been ripe for review until the classification was applied to a particular piece of land. Nonetheless, the court declined to reach the substantive challenge as unnecessary.
II.
In order to determine the Statute of Limitations applicable to a particular declaratory judgment action, the court must "examine the substance of that action to identify the relationship out of which the claim arises and the relief sought” (Solnick v Whalen, 49 NY2d 224, 229). If the court determines that the underlying dispute can be or could have been resolved through a form of action or proceeding for which a specific limitation period is statutorily provided, that limitation period governs the declaratory judgment action (Press v County of Monroe, 50 NY2d 695; Solnick v Whalen, supra, at 230; see, Koerner v State of New York, 62 NY2d 442, 446-447). Here, the question is whether the four-month Statute of Limitations period applicable to article 78 proceedings should be invoked.
The general rule is that an article 78 proceeding is unavailable to challenge the validity of a legislative act such as a zoning ordinance (Matter of Voelckers v Guelli, 58 NY2d 170, 176; Matter of Merced v Fisher, 38 NY2d 557, 559; Peekskill Suburbs v Morabito, 74 AD2d 843, affd 51 NY2d 941). However, when the challenge is directed not at the substance of the ordinance but at the procedures followed in its enactment, it is maintainable in an article 78 proceeding (Matter of Voelckers v Guelli, supra, at 177).
By the same reasoning, contrary to the view of the Appellate Division, the action attacking the alleged SEQRA violations in the classification of C-PB Commercial-Pine Bush was not commenced in a timely manner. Common Council’s creation of this classification, with its concurrent announcement of a policy to commercially develop the Pine Bush in an ecologically sound manner, constituted an "action” within the meaning of SEQRA, in that it committed the City to future commercial development of the Pine Bush (6 NYCRR 617.2 [b] [2]). SEQRA review was required before any specific applications were needlessly studied at great expense to both the City and the developers (6 NYCRR 617.1 [c]; cf., Matter of Programming & Sys. v New York State Urban Dev. Corp., 61 NY2d 738). Inasmuch as consideration of possible detrimental effects of this action should have been given at the earliest possible time (ECL 8-0109 [4]; 6 NYCRR 617.1 [c]), the time to complain of SEQRA violations in the enactment of this ordinance was within four months of the date of the enactment.
III.
Plaintiffs/petitioners also raised a constitutional question based upon the claimed vagueness of the ordinance which created the classification C-PB Commercial-Pine Bush and its alleged overbroad delegation of authority to the Site Plan
The ordinance creating the classification of C-PB Commercial-Pine Bush defined the principal commercial use allowed as "[s]ingle-story office buildings or otherwise conforming to the land contour as determined and approved by the appropriate Site Plan Review Agency.” Plaintiffs/petitioners contend that this language improperly conferred legislative power on the Site Plan Review Agency. However, "there is no constitutional prohibition against the delegation of power, with reasonable safeguards and standards” (Matter of Levine v Whalen, 39 NY2d 510, 515; Matter of City of Utica v Water Pollution Control Bd., 5 NY2d 164, 169). This ordinance merely added a classification to the list of possible classifications with which the Common Council could label a particular zone. The Site Plan Review Agency was powerless to act pursuant to this ordinance until the second ordinance, creating the Pine Bush Site Plan Review District, was enacted. In the second ordinance, Common Council enacted a specific framework of criteria to be considered by the Agency in passing upon an application.
IV.
The next question is whether the City’s failure to consider in the EIS for Anderson’s project the cumulative impact of as many as 10 pending proposals covering 295.5 acres violated its obligations under SEQRA pursuant to 6 NYCRR 617.11 (a) (11) and (b) or 6 NYCRR 617.15 (a) (l).
While the regulations provide that the agency may choose, in its discretion, not to examine the cumulative impact of separate applications within the same geographic area (6 NYCRR 617.15 [a] [1]), the applications involved in this case
As in Chinese Staff, the project at issue in this case is only a part of a larger plan designed to resolve conflicting specific environmental concerns in a subsection of a municipality with special environmental significance (cf., Kleppe v Sierra Club, 427 US 390). Where a governmental body announces a policy to reach a balance between conflicting environmental goals— here, commercial development and maintenance of ecological integrity — in such a significant area, assessment of the cumulative impact of other proposed or pending developments is necessarily implicated in the achievement of the desired result. Since "SEQRA mandates a rather finely tuned and systematic balancing analysis in every instance” (Matter of Town of Henrietta v Department of Envtl. Conservation, 76 AD2d 215, 223), the City should have considered each of the factors listed in ECL 8-0109 and 6 NYCRR 617.11, identified any factor upon which the proposed action might have a significant effect and taken a "hard look” at it (Matter of Jackson v New York State Urban Dev. Corp., 67 NY2d 400, 416-417). Thus, under the special circumstances which exist here, the City of Albany’s failure to consider the potential cumulative impact of other pending projects with the Anderson application upon the Pine Bush before granting the zoning change constituted a violation of its obligations pursuant to SEQRA. The determination to grant Anderson’s application for a zoning change to C-PB Commercial-Pine Bush was,
V.
We have examined the remaining contentions of plaintiffs-petitioners and find them to be without merit.
Accordingly, the order of the Appellate Division should be modified, without costs, by reinstating so much of the first cause of action as seeks a declaration that the ordinance is vague and constitutes an overbroad delegation of authority, and declaring that the ordinance is not invalid in these respects.
Chief Judge Wachtler and Judges Kaye, Alexander, Hancock, Jr., and Bellacosa concur; Judge Simons taking no part.
Order modified, without costs, in accordance with the opinion herein and, as so modified, affirmed.
. Plaintiffs/petitioners argue essentially that the ordinance was invalid because of an overbroad grant of legislative power to the Site Plan Review Agency.
. The criteria, contained in section 5 of the new article 7-A of the zoning ordinance, are as follows:
"1. Location, arrangement, size, design and general site compatibility of buildings, lighting and signs.
"2. Overall impact on the neighborhood including compatibility of design considerations.
"3. Adequacy and arrangement of vehicular traffic access and circulation, including intersections, road widths, pavement surfaces, dividers and traffic controls.
"4. The location and arrangement of off-street parking, delivery and loading areas.
"5. Adequacy and arrangement of pedestrian traffic improvements and overall pedestrian convenience.
"6. Adequacy of stormwater and drainage facilities.
"7. Adequacy of water supply and sewage disposal connections.
"8. Type and arrangement of trees, shrubs, fencing and any other improvements proposed as a visual and/or noise buffer between the subject parcel and adjoining lots.
*205 "9. Adequacy of fire lanes and other emergency zones.
"10. Adequacy of exterior storage areas and their fencing or screening.
"11. Special attention to the adequacy and impact of structures, roadways and landscaping in areas with susceptibility to ponding, flooding and/or erosion.”
. 6 NYCRR 617.11 (a) includes the following in its list of indicia of significant effects on the environment: "(11) two or more related actions undertaken, funded or approved by an agency, no one of which has or would have a significant effect on the environment, but which cumulatively meet one or more of the criteria in this section.”
6 NYCRR 617.11 (b) provides, in relevant part: "For the purpose of determining whether an action will cause one of the foregoing consequences, the action shall be deemed to include other simultaneous or subsequent actions which are * * * included in any long-range plan of which the action under consideration is a part”.
6 NYCRR 617.15 (a) (1) states: "A programmatic or generic environmental impact statement may be used to assess the environmental effects of * * * a number of separate actions in a given geographic area which, if considered singly may have minor effects, but if considered together may have significant effects”.