State Sen. George Borrello only got 10 minutes to question the state’s agriculture and environmental conservation commissioners.

The impact of the state’s Freshwater Wetlands Act on Chautauqua County took a good portion of the senator’s time with the commissioners last week.

Borrello and Assemblyman Andrew Molitor, R-Jamestown, recently reintroduced exempt inland lakes from the state’s Freshwater Wetlands Act. Sen. George Borrello, R-Sunset Bay, recently reintroduced his bill (S.3656) in the Senate, while Assemblyman Andrew Molitor, R-Westfield, plans to reintroduce the legislation in the state Assembly in the coming days.

The bill would exempt inland lakes that are navigable waterways and have an area of 150 acres or more from freshwater wetlands designations. The bill will further exclude the Great Lakes from the definition of “inland lake.” The legislation was introduced too late in the 2024 legislative session to head off the wetlands regulations impact on Chautauqua Lake and area farmers, so Borrello used his time during joint legislative budget hearings to ask about how state officials are mitigating the effects of the Freshwater Wetlands Act.

“The wetlands regulations are creating a lot of chaos,” Borrello said to Sean Mahar, interim DEC commissioner. “It’s already impacting real estate. How do we consider a navigable waterway like Chautauqua Lake or Lake George a swamp, slough or bog, which is really what wetlands regulations are supposed to be for?”

Mahar said a general permit is being designed for Chautauqua Lake, something DEC Region 9 officials said in 2024 and which Mahar referenced in September letter to Borrello and former Assemblyman Andrew Goodell. A streamlined permit will be created for Chautauqua Lake and, by extension, for use on other lakes that find themselves home to wetlands under the proposed regulations and the review of new areas under Article 24.

Mahar said in the September letter to Borrello and former Assemblyman Andy Goodell that much of the south basin of Chautauqua Lake will be considered a wetland regulated by the DEC because there are more than 12.4 contiguous acres of submerged vegetation in the area. Before the new regulations, wetlands had to be included on a map before they could be regulated by the DEC.

“That’s based on biological conditions and factors in the ground and the way that wetlands were defined in the legislation,” Mahar said in response to Borrello’s question during budget hearings this week. “The general permits that we’re advancing will help address Chautauqua Lake. I”ll pivot back and circle back with you on that.”

In December Chautauqua County’s Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board raised farmland as a concern when the Freshwater Wetlands Act took effect in January. The county Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board sent letters to Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mahar asking the state to hold off on the wetlands regulations because they could be burdensome to agricultural producers and landowners.

Specific agricultural practices are excluded from the regulated activities in the current wetland regulations and similar language exists in the proposed changes with the clause that once agricultural activities cease all activities on the lands that meet the definition of a freshwater wetland will fall under the new regulations. Not mapping wetlands as has been done in the past and instead relying on new statutory language to define wetlands, Daniel Steward, county Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board chairman wrote, creates vagueness for landowners whether or not their land may be regulated under the new regulations.

Agricultural producers may be forced to keep land in production regardless of weather and seasonal conditions for fear of losing the ability to crop it in future years if it is now determined to be in a regulated wetland, Steward wrote. State law did not increase funding to the DEC to oversee more land when the regulations take effect in January, and Steward said it’s possible the DEC will get a large number of requests for jurisdictional determinations on agricultural parcels.

“Agricultural producers in Chautauqua County already have a lengthy process of getting wetlands delineated through the United States Department of Agriculture Natural Resources Conservation Service and the proposed changes have the potential to add additional delays to the federal process,” Steward wrote. “Additional ramifications and unanticipated impacts will likely occur for all landowners due to the proposed changes. The new proposed NYS DEC wetlands regulations add an additional layer of uncertainty which should be addressed prior to implementation.”

Borrello raised those concerns with Richard Ball, state agriculture commissioner, during this week’s budget talks.

“My concerns, I have a few, but my first concern is we have a lot of regulations that have a negative impact on farmers and other small businesses, particularly right now we’re wrangling with these new wetland regulations,” Borrello said. “These regulations have been essentially redefining what is considered a wetland and and I’ve heard this a lot from property owners around our recreational lakes like Chautauqua Lake. I guess my question is how do we balance those new, I guess, expanded wetland regulations against the the needs of our our farmers and our ability to have productive farmlands? Do new permits and potentially have an impact on the ability to build new structures within you know, now newly designated wetland areas?”

Ball said wetlands are an issue for farmers, both with the state’s new regulations and potentially changing regulations from the federal government. He said the state Agriculture and Markets Department works regularly with the Department of Environmental Conservation to find compromises.

“In regards to those regulations that kind of moves and changes in ebbs and flows, if you’ll forgive the pun there, but I think that you know today I’m happy to say that that the Department of Agriculture, we’ve never had a better relationship with DEC in my history of farming in New York state,” Ball said. “So if we have a question, an issue about a wetlands and a delineation or anything of that sort we’re able to sit down and talk through it and figure out what the best outcome is for the farmer. Having said that you know, our work again together with the DEC when we look at those regulations and watersheds, we’ve got decades of history working together on that both with our CAFOs or large dairy operations, nutrient management, etc. So we’re actually in a pretty good place right now in New York.”