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Scoping Comment Period Closes With Outpouring of Expert & Community Voices

The public comment period for the scoping of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the proposed Six Senses Hudson Valley resort and spa closed Friday, June 26th.

Submissions arrived from scientists, environmental organizations, elected officials, attorneys, agricultural interests, and ordinary residents, collectively making clear that the community expects a rigorous, thorough, and independent environmental review before any further action is taken on IHG/CECNY’s proposal to build a 240-guest luxury resort and spa on the Old Stone Farm property at the intersection of Clinton, Hyde Park, and Rhinebeck.

What Happens Next

All public scoping comments are available for review at the Clinton Planning Board’s document portal:

SEQRA Scoping – Public Comments

The Planning Board will now review the submitted comments and use them to finalize the scope of the DEIS — determining what topics IHG/CECNY’s and the town’s consultants must address and how deeply. This is a pivotal moment. A strong, well-scoped DEIS will force the developer to confront the full range of environmental, infrastructure, and community impacts its proposal would generate. A weak one risks letting those impacts go unexamined until it is too late.

The breadth of expert and community participation in this comment period sends an unmistakable signal: the public is engaged, informed, and will not allow a perfunctory review to substitute for the rigorous analysis that New York’s State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) demands and this project requires.

Stay Informed and Involved

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The next phase of Planning Board activity will be critical, and your continued involvement matters.

A Broad and Expert Coalition

The scope and depth of comment submissions signals that this project is being watched well beyond town borders. Among the notable submissions:

  • Stuart Findlay, scientist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, brought rigorous ecological expertise to bear on the project’s potential impacts on the Crum Elbow Creek watershed and surrounding environment.
  • Drew Gamils of Riverkeeper weighed in on waterway and water quality concerns, consistent with Riverkeeper’s long-standing mission to protect the Hudson River and its tributaries.
  • Tom Helling of the Sierra Club submitted comments reflecting the organization’s opposition to large-scale commercial development in environmentally sensitive rural areas — a concern they have expressed consistently regarding similar IHG projects elsewhere in New York State.
  • Jonathan Clark of Scenic Hudson addressed the project’s implications for the historic scenic character of the Mid-Hudson Valley, a landscape of regional and national significance.
  • Assemblywoman Didi Barrett (NYS Assembly, 106th District) made her voice heard, underscoring that elected officials representing this area are paying close attention to how the Planning Board conducts its review.
  • Warren Replansky, attorney and CSHV’s legal counsel, submitted formal comments on the legal and procedural dimensions of the SEQRA scoping process, ensuring the community’s legal interests are represented on the record.
  • Elizabeth Spinzea of the Rhinebeck Town Board submitted comments on behalf of a neighboring municipality that has already filed suit over the irregular zoning maneuvers that allowed this project to reach the Planning Board in the first place.
  • Greg Quinn, a local Clinton farmer, expressed concerns regarding a project that would extract 18-20,000 gallons of water from local aquifers daily, contaminate that water with chemicals, PFAS, pharmaceuticals and microplastics, and expel it as treated effluent to the Crum Elbow Creek.

 

Individual residents also submitted comments, and several offered pointed, specific guidance on where and how the Clinton Planning Board should direct its investigative efforts in the DEIS — from water consumption methodology and wastewater disposal to traffic analysis, biodiversity protection, and comparative studies on site uses to establish resource utilization fair and consistent with the AR3/AR5 zoning, to arrive at more equitable guest capacity numbers.

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