The American Land Rescue Fund, Inc. (ALRF) and its founder, Alexandra Fasulo, filed a verified petition earlier this month in Albany County Supreme Court against the New York State Department of Public Service (DPS) and the Office of Renewable Energy Siting and Electric Transmission (ORES). The lawsuit challenges DPS's refusal to release unredacted wildlife surveys, habitat studies, and Net Conservation Benefit Plan materials from the Fort Edward Solar project, a Boralex Inc. facility proposed across nearly 2,000 acres of Washington County grassland that supports several threatened and endangered bird species, including the Northern Harrier, Upland Sandpiper, Sedge Wren, and Short-eared Owl.
The project site falls within a designated Important Bird Area and an approximate Raptor Winter Concentration Area. Fasulo, a local farmer, attempted to review the application after ORES listed Fort Edward Solar for a siting permit. What she found was a public docket in which nearly every page of wildlife documentation had been blacked out, in some cases entirely, making it impossible to assess what species impacts had been identified or whether proposed mitigation measures were adequate.
ORES Cited a Species Protection Exemption That Petitioners Say Does Not Apply to DPS
DPS denied the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request by citing Environmental Conservation Law Section 3-0301(2)(r), a provision that allows certain sensitive species location data to be withheld to prevent habitat destruction or poaching. The petitioners argue the agency fundamentally misread the statute. That exemption applies only to the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), not to DPS or ORES, and it covers only narrow locational data. It does not authorize the wholesale redaction of survey methodologies, population assessments, conservation analyses, or mitigation calculations. The petition also notes that the redactions were made by Boralex, the project applicant, not by the agency, based on the company's own interpretation of what the exemption covers.
The agency's response to the initial request, which took nearly three months and arrived on February 2, 2026, did not produce any records. It directed the petitioners to the already-publicly-available, heavily-redacted docket. When petitioners appealed, DPS told them to seek access through a protective order in the separate siting proceeding. That path was also closed: the petitioners had already been denied party status in the Fort Edward Solar proceeding two months earlier, making them ineligible to use the protective order mechanism the agency was pointing them toward.
What the Lawsuit Reveals About ORES Transparency Practices in Renewable Siting
ORES was created in 2020 under New York's accelerated renewable energy permitting framework. The agency has authority to override local zoning laws and is exempt from the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), the standard environmental review process that would otherwise require public disclosure of species and habitat findings. That combination has made ORES the subject of growing scrutiny from EHS professionals, conservation organizations, and municipalities who argue that the speed gained in permitting has come at the cost of the public review mechanisms that normally accompany large-scale facility siting decisions.
The Fort Edward lawsuit does not challenge the Fort Edward Solar project directly. It challenges the records access process. But the outcome will affect how EHS and sustainability professionals can engage with ORES proceedings going forward, particularly in cases where threatened or endangered species overlap with proposed project footprints.
