COLD SPRING – Hours after the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation & Historic Preservation, serving as lead agency for the State Environmental Quality Review Act review of the proposed Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail accepted a Final Generic Environmental Impact Statement from Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, Inc., the Cold Spring Village Board called on the state to conduct a public hearing on the controversial project in order to understand its impact on the village.
The applicant proposes to construct the Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail, a non-motorized, shared-use, publicly accessible linear park along the eastern shore of the Hudson between Beacon on the north and Cold Spring on the south.
The Fjord Trail would be partially within the Hudson Highlands State Park Preserve which is owned and managed by the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation and would extend through other public and private lands.
The action under review includes the development of 7.5 miles of Main Trail, 2.8 miles of Trail Meanders, Trail Banks, Water Trail Connections, 2.2 miles of Regional Trail connections, two new parking areas, expansion of the Washburn lot parking area, restroom buildings at five locations, and a maintenance facility in Beacon.
The current plan by Hudson Highlands Fjord Trail envisions a walkway in and along the Hudson River, beginning in Dockside Park within the boundaries of the village.
Cold Spring Mayor Kathleen Foley believes “having an entrance to the trail at the bottom of dead-end Main Street is more than the village can manage, in terms of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, public safety and quality of life impacts.”
Foley noted if the Fjord Trail extends into Cold Spring, “it will increase the stress and impacts of over-tourism that villagers already endure nearly ten months of the year. There are just under 2,000 residents in the village. On busy weekends, we can be overwhelmed by thousands more visitors. And it’s not just people who come to hike in the state park. The village itself is an attraction for people who want to experience a well-preserved, historical, beautiful Hudson River village. If the Fjord Trail comes into the village at the proposed ten-to fourteen-foot-wide scale, whether it’s over our streets or in the river, it will have a tremendous physical impact on the village. We need feeder pathways scaled to our streets and neighborhoods and a trail to start north of the village.”
Cold Spring’s village attorney has recommended that the municipality request the public hearing for the 1,000-page document despite the fact that New York State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation is not required to do so.
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