Seggos, longest serving DEC commissioner, reflects on 8 years as New York's lead environmental protector

Mar. 17—Basil Seggos, the longest-serving commissioner at the state Department of Environmental Conservation, is resigning this spring, closing an 81/2 year chapter in a career focused on the environment.

In an interview Friday, Seggos said he has truly loved the job that has put him at the forefront of environmental policy in New York at a pivotal time for global environmental conservation and the fight against climate change, which he said has been challenging and rewarding in equal measures.

"It's a tough job every single day," he said. "Every single day, you get thrown a curveball or two or three. Your schedule can be mapped out in the morning and by the afternoon it's wiped out."

DEC is responsible for everything from development project approvals to wildfire fighting, creating and implementing policies to combat climate change to rescuing lost hikers, cleaning up contaminated properties to protecting native New York animal species.

"We truly are in the middle of everything, and I think that's what makes the work, what makes DEC such a wonderful organization to run," Seggos said.

And that role has matured with time even as Seggos has led DEC. When he was first appointed in 2015, New York's lawmakers were just beginning to consider wide-ranging policies to address climate change at the state level, resulting in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act in 2019. That law, which set some of the strongest climate protection goals, like carbon emission reduction and electrical grid improvements, of any state in the U.S., and it put DEC right in the driver seat of making sure those goals were achieved.

Other programs have come as well, including the Resiliency and Economic Development Initiative aimed at repairing flood damage to the shoreline communities along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, which DEC is heavily involved in as well.

Seggos said he has seen the average person become more familiar with, and accepting of, environmental action and ecosystem-conscious rules, and he gave some credit to DEC's response to environmental disasters as helping pave that path.

"REDI is a strong example, because that's a part of our state that got hit twice in three years by record high water levels, and our job at DEC wasn't to go in there and create divisive policies, it was to get in there, explain the problem and translate that into immediate action," he said. "I think that really opened people's eyes to the sort of razor's edge that we live on."

Seggos said he sees DEC' work under his tenure as "government at it's finest," and said that work is still continuing with REDI and many other programs. Of the 136 REDI projects approved starting in 2019, 84 are complete, 25 are underway, and 24 have or will break ground this year.

"That's pretty fast when it comes to government," he said.

Seggos has long been vocal about Plan 2014, the water management agreement struck between the U.S. and Canada regarding outflows of the Great Lakes system through the St. Lawrence River. Plan 2014, which actually went into effect in 2017, was met with much derision by north country residents and some state officials including Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo following the flooding in 2017 and 2019, blamed as the cause of the historic high water.

In 2019, New York filed a lawsuit against the IJC over the flood damages, arguing that the IJC had failed to appropriately respond to high water levels upriver from the Moses-Saunders Dam in a way that led to extensive damage to shoreline communities. Seggos welcomed that suit, and said the IJC needed to demonstrate more flexibility in outflow management.

Seggos has long said he sees value in the plan, but also a need for flexibility and accountability for the International Joint Commission in charge of enacting the plan and setting outflows at the Moses-Saunders Power Dam in Massena.

"I worked very hard to understand what flexibility we could reinject into the plan so that we have a greater ability to prioritize the shoreline communities," he said.

The IJC is in the process of an expedited review of Plan 2014, meant to gauge whether it has effectively mitigated water-level related problems and effectively supported use of the waterways it regulates.

He said the ultimate response to those high water levels, and other environmental disasters around New York in the late 2010s, led to the passage of the Bond Act, which set aside $4.2 billion statewide for environmental resilience projects, similar to those funded by REDI.

Seggos also mentioned the discovery of PFAS chemicals in the water supply at Hoosick Falls, Rensselaer County, in 2015. Just two weeks into his time with DEC, the chemicals, formally titled per- and polyfluroalkyl substances, were discovered in great quantities in the village's water supply. It was early days, but PFAS were discovered to be quite prevalent, and to pose quite serious health concerns to people exposed to them in great quantities or over long periods of time.

They were then discovered, again and again, in water supplies, food stocks, even in the air, across New York and the country. They were discovered in the water supplies of Fort Drum, leading to a multi-million dollar mitigation project and the installation of new wells in uncontaminated areas of the watershed.

It's an issue Seggos said DEC continues to work on with other state agencies, the federal and local governments.

"Unfortunately it's sort of everywhere, it's in food, water, and landscape, it's in the air," he said. "But we took that, went to the (state) legislature and found what's now $5.5 billion for response to water problems around the state. That's an example of having a crisis that we turned into something that was a real winner for New York."

As he looks to his plans for after he leaves the DEC this spring, after the state budgeting process is completed, Seggos said he plans to spend much more time in the north country and Jefferson County, where he has many ties. His in-laws have a home along the St. Lawrence River and live in Watertown, and Seggos maintains a home in the Thousand Islands as well. Seggos's sister in law owns Starch Cafe and Bakery in downtown Watertown, and his nephew and brother-in-law are both state troopers stationed in Jefferson County. Seggos himself has trained at Fort Drum, as an Army Reservist.

"The north country is sort of my center of gravity, it has become that and I really look forward to getting back there as quickly as possible," he said.

Even as he leaves DEC, Seggos said he isn't leaving the world of environmental conservation.

"This is my calling in life, to be active on environmental issues, and I'm going to continue that," he said. "It'll take a different form in the coming months and years, but I don't intend to leave New York state or intend to back down on what I view as an opportunity right now to really shape the planet the right way over the coming decades."