The attorney general should re-visit claim that county withheld permits

Editor's note: The statement below was issued today by Orange County Attorney Langdon Chapman in reference to the multimillion dollar federal discrimination lawsuit brought by the Greens of Chester against the county and the Town of Chester, in which the state attorney general has now intervened.

The litigation against the county has no merit for the following reasons:

1. The Greens property is not even in the county sewer district. As such, they cannot be considered for sewer as part of the County’s sewage capacity available to the District. Stating they are not getting County sewer when they are not in the County Sewer District is entirely correct.

2. In terms of the water, constituents expressed concerns about water quantity and quality if this project goes forward. We advised the state of those concerns. The state is actually the entity seeking updated information from the Greens on the developer’s proposed wells. It is the State that wrote to the developer as follows:

“Given the changes in regulations and design standards, along with the amount of growth that has taken place in Orange County, and in order to meet conditions of the enclosed 2002 approval, the Department of Health will be requiring a resubmittal of the Application for Approval of Plans for Public Water Supply Improvement, including the following information: . . .”

See attached. The county’s permit, as the motion to intervene acknowledges, has been in place since 2013 and remains so.

In short, the attorney general has not identified a single permit being withheld by the county. Asking the state to do its job and review constituent concerns about water quality is perfectly reasonable. The state is apparently reviewing their state permit (per the attached).

Given the above, the attorney general should re-visit their claims against the county.

Langdon Chapman

Orange County Attorney