CHAUTAUQUA LAKE–The court challenge to New York’s wetlands law has taken a surprising, fascinating turn.

To understand this, let’s pick up where we left off six weeks ago.

That’s when acting state Supreme Court Justice Richard Platkin struck down the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation’s, or DEC’s, wetlands regulations.

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Such law can be devastating for Chautauqua County, particularly because of the impact on Chautauqua Lake. By increasing controls over what the DEC labels as wetlands, the law can turn Chautauqua Lake into a weed farm, hinder growth of lakefront-property values, and have the effect of driving up property taxes for those owning land not along Chautauqua Lake.

The only serious hope to stop such wetlands law is through the courts, not the state government’s legislative or executive branch as currently constituted.

Platkin’s order is a victory for the challengers. The order identifies them as the Chautauqua Lake Property Owners Association; the Business Council of New York State; the village of Kiryas Joel and the town of Palm Tree; and the Chautauqua Lake Partnership.

Yet the order doesn’t hold that the DEC lacked authority to do what it did. Rather, the order is narrower: It holds that the DEC, in enacting the wetlands regulations, didn’t follow necessary procedure under the state Environmental Quality Review Act, or SEQRA.

To put it simplistically, the order takes the DEC to task not for what the DEC did but for how the DEC did it.

That leaves the DEC free to start over.

True, in starting over, the DEC must–under the order–jump through higher and narrower hoops.

Yet the state–as every New York taxpayer knows–has deep pockets.

And please remember this: Statists don’t give up easily.

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Given all of that and more, one might have thought the DEC would appeal Platkin’s order.

But guess what? The DEC didn’t appeal, yet the Chautauqua Lake Property Owners Association, or CLPOA, did.

The CLPOA’s opening-appellate brief is due in several months, so we’ll know then the full extent of the CLPOA’s assertions on appeal.

Yet the CLPOA won’t appeal any challenger’s victory in the state Supreme Court. That leaves broader and deeper issues that Platkin didn’t reach.

Why didn’t he reach them? Because he invalidated the DEC’s wetlands regulations on the narrower grounds that the DEC didn’t follow SEQRA procedure. Platkin could have gone further, yet he didn’t need to.

On appeal, those broader and deeper issues that the CLPOA raises may well go not only to how the DEC did what it did but also to what the DEC did. For example: Does the DEC even have authority to do what it seeks to do in increasing control over what it labels as wetlands?

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Summer is upon us, and especially at this time of the year, you, faithful reader of this column, know why this question matters.

Please re-read the fourth paragraph of today’s column.

Wetlands law as statists envision it would substantially hinder our getting the Chautauqua Lake weed problem under control.

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For most locals, one question involves not whether but how to get the weed problem under control. Part of this question involves the extent to which one uses weed harvesting and the extent to which one uses herbicides.

Three thoughts on this question.

First, it isn’t directly at issue in the challenge to New York’s wetlands law, yet it’s conceivable that the law can hinder, for example, weed harvesting and herbicide use.

Second, honorable people view weed harvesting and herbicide use differently. Some want one, some want the other, and some want both.

Third, we do neither ourselves nor Chautauqua Lake any favors by

�–� dancing around this difference of views or

�–� indulging assertions that herbicides applied down the lake can seriously flow up the lake.

To be sure, there was a time–as you read here 14 weeks ago–when the lake flowed from southeast to northwest.

At that time, what is now the Chautauqua Gorge was the Chautauqua Lake outlet.

That, however, was 10,000 years ago.

The lake hasn’t flowed that way for 10,000 years.

That’s right: 10,000 years.

Does that mean no herbicide molecules can move up the lake, either on their own or attached to, say, boats?

No, yet assertions of serious flow up the lake are, to understate the point, counterintuitive.

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Dr. Randy Elf’s paternal grandparents had a cottage at Cheney’s Point on Chautauqua Lake for 40 years. For more on the wetlands law, see the interview of him at 0:17.10 to 0:23.10 of https://accesschautauquacountytv.org/episode/GVbIPKfKKmw.

COPYRIGHT © 2026 BY RANDY ELF