Gabriella Velardi-Ward is part of a group of Staten Islanders fighting to save 18 acres of wetlands in Staten Island’s Graniteville neighborhood. ALEXIS SOTTILE / GOTHAMIST
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Paula Segal of the nonprofit environmental justice organization TakeRoot Justice, who is providing legal support to the local activists, has also threatened a court challenge over the project’s environmental impact statement, which she says is insufficient because while it compared the BJ’s plan to what could have been built as-of-right without the rezoning, it assumed in both cases that the site would receive the state freshwater wetlands permit, something that had not yet taken place, the same permit the state refused to be bullied into issuing in 2012, and the very permit that is now up for review.
“If [regulatory agencies] don’t require the developer to write a proper environmental impact statement, they will be sued,” promises Segal. “They will not be able to build anything based on the study they have now.”
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