On April 8, 2026, Judge Richard M. Platkin of the New York State Supreme Court, Albany County, entirely annulled the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC’s) revised Part 664 freshwater wetlands regulations for noncompliance with the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA).  The revised regulations went into effect in January 2025, and their annulment puts DEC, property owners, and practitioners into limbo as the previous Part 664 regulations were enacted prior to the New York State Legislature’s most recent amendments to the Freshwater Wetlands Act.

Background

On April 9, 2022, the New York State legislature passed significant amendments to Article 24 of the Environmental Conservation Law, known as the Freshwater Wetlands Act.

To implement these statutory changes, DEC revised its existing freshwater wetland mapping and classification regulations set out at 6 NYCRR Part 664. On January 1, 2025, DEC’s revised 6 NYCRR Part 664 regulations took effect, greatly expanding DEC’s jurisdiction over freshwater wetlands in New York.

Four lawsuits were filed in April 2025 challenging the 2022 statutory amendments and the new Part 664 regulations. These lawsuits were combined and resolved in Judge Platkin’s April 8, 2026, consolidated decision, order and judgment.

SEQRA Ruling

Judge Platkin found that DEC’s SEQRA review pertaining to the new Part 664 regulations was legally deficient, concluding that DEC failed to identify relevant environmental concerns, take a “hard look” at reasonably foreseeable impacts, and provide a “reasoned elaboration” of the basis for its negative declaration.

Judge Platkin began by holding that petitioners in three of the four consolidated cases had standing to maintain SEQRA claims, emphasizing that property owners have a legally cognizable interest in ensuring that an agency complies with SEQRA before adopting regulations that may affect their land use and development rights.

The Court then found that DEC did not satisfy SEQRA’s threshold obligation “to identify the relevant areas of environmental concern” under 6 NYCRR 617.7(b)(2). The Court highlighted that the only contemporaneous explanation DEC offered for finding no potential areas of concern was its assertion that expanding regulatory jurisdiction over wetlands would, by definition, reduce adverse environmental impacts by requiring more projects to avoid, minimize, or mitigate impacts to wetlands. As the Court summarized, “The Short EAF’s [Environmental Assessment Form’s] analysis rests entirely on the narrow premise that expanded wetland protection is inherently beneficial to wetlands, and there is no indication that DEC considered anything other than that objective when it determined that Part 664 had no potential for adverse impacts.”

The Court noted that DEC received thousands of public comments, with some identifying specific areas of environmental concern, such as urban sprawl and impacts to aquatic ecosystems, yet DEC did not identify any of these issues as relevant areas requiring further analysis. The Court rejected DEC’s argument that any environmental impacts would be addressed through project-specific SEQRA reviews under Part 663 (Freshwater Wetlands Permit Requirements), stating that project‑level review “will not, and cannot, assess the cumulative effects of the new regulatory framework on development patterns, land‑use intensity and community character throughout the State.”

After concluding that DEC failed to identify the relevant areas of environmental concern, the Court held that DEC necessarily failed to take the required hard look at those concerns. The Court found that DEC’s significance analysis, to the extent it was discernible, was confined to the single issue of wetlands protection and failed to articulate a basis for ruling out potential adverse environmental impacts to resources other than wetlands. Ultimately, the Court held that DEC’s negative declaration could not stand because SEQRA requires a reasoned elaboration to support a determination of non‑significance, which DEC did not provide.

Other Arguments

Beyond SEQRA, the Court rejected petitioners’ various constitutional and procedural challenges to the 2022 Freshwater Wetlands Act legislative amendments and related provisions of DEC’s adopted regulations. The Court concluded that petitioners did not demonstrate that their procedural due process rights were violated and did not show that the 2022 statutory amendments were impermissibly vague. The Court further found that petitioners did not establish that the amendments improperly delegated regulatory decisions to nongovernmental actors or that they violated the Home Rule protections of the New York State Constitution.

The Court did not rule out challenges to provisions of the amendments and/or regulations based on their application to specific circumstances, but as noted above, did reject facial challenges.

Impacts

The ruling leaves the 2022 legislative amendments fully intact but annuls the Part 664 regulations in their entirety. DEC must now undertake a new SEQRA-compliant review and reintroduce the regulations, creating interim uncertainty for land-use planning, permitting, and project review in New York State. Compliance with the amended Freshwater Wetlands Act is required, but there are no prior regulations on which DEC can easily fall back. The pre-2025 DEC Part 664 regulations were reliant on a permitting process based on DEC-promulgated freshwater wetlands maps that are no longer in effect under the 2022 legislative amendments. Also unclear is whether the agency will be required to undertake a renewed State Administrative Procedure Act (SAPA) when it reintroduces the Part 664 regulations. DEC has not yet announced whether it plans to appeal the decision. It has until May 10, 2026, to file a notice of appeal.

SPR will continue to monitor the impact of this ruling and provide updates via this blog.