Dear BPCA Board and Leadership,

I am a Battery Park City resident writing about the North/West Battery Park City Resiliency Project tree removals.

In a response to community inquiries signed by Michael Ryan, Community Construction Liaison, BPCA confirmed the project will remove 500 mature trees - up from 435 in the Final EIS - with the +65 increase reflected in the December 19, 2025 Technical Memorandum and no Supplemental EIS prepared. The response also stated that USACE Guidelines are "not directly applicable to NWBPCR because it is not a USACE project" while continuing to reference "the 15-foot USACE 'buffer' zone," and that "each tree in the project area was assessed for removal, protection, or transplantation."

The response makes clear that trees are being removed because they fall within "limits of work" or because adjacent root zones would be impacted by construction. But limits of work and foundation geometry are design choices, not external constraints - and no reach in the FEIS was designed with tree conservation as a primary objective. That is the threshold problem, and it is the reason 500 trees, not a substantially smaller number, are being cut.

SEQRA requires that an agency take a "hard look" at significant environmental impacts and at the alternatives that could mitigate them. The three questions below test whether that hard look was actually taken - at the buffer assumption underlying the design, at the post-FEIS changes that grew the count, and at whether the design itself treated tree retention as the default. Pending those answers, we ask that no further removals proceed in any reach until the per-reach analysis has been published and independently reviewed.

1. Is a vegetation-free buffer being applied to NWBPCR, and on what basis?

The response states that "USACE Guidelines are not directly applicable to NWBPCR because it is not a USACE project." That differs from FEIS Executive Summary p. ES-17, which describes the design as one that meets "the objectives of FEMA (and the USACE guidelines)." The response also continues to refer to "the 15-foot USACE 'buffer' zone."

We ask BPCA to confirm on the record:

(a) Is USACE EP 1110-2-18 being applied to NWBPCR - yes or no?

(b) Is BPCA applying any vegetation-free buffer along the flood barrier as a project design standard? If yes, what is the distance, and what is its source: a BPCA-adopted standard, a consultant engineering recommendation, a FEMA requirement, a state regulation, or something else? If no, what clearance criterion, if any, governs which trees fall within the limits of work on vegetation-clearance grounds?

2. December 19, 2025 Technical Memorandum - was a hard look taken at the additional removals?

The Memorandum raised the removal count from 435 to 500 - a 15% increase project-wide, 77% in Reach 1 alone - and concluded that the changes "would not result in any significant adverse impacts not addressed or inadequately addressed in the FEIS." On that basis, no Supplemental EIS was prepared. Section B.2 of the Memo states only that "the design has progressed since the FEIS, the design team has determined that additional trees will need to be removed and replaced," and Section D restates the totals without identifying which design refinements drove the increase or what alternatives were considered.

The "hard look" standard, applied through 6 NYCRR 617.9(a)(7), requires the agency to actually examine significant new information and explain its determination - not to conclude in summary form that no examination is required. We ask BPCA to publish, for each design refinement that produced additional removals: the refinement, its tree-count impact by reach, the alternatives considered with their projected tree counts, and the specific factual and legal basis for the no-Supplemental-EIS conclusion. We further ask that this publication be reviewed by an independent panel of qualified arborists, flood engineers, and landscape architects with no financial relationship to the design-build contractor, and that their findings be published on the record.

3. Per-tree justification, retention-first design alternatives, and independent review.

The response states that each tree was assessed against determinants including foundation type, deployable proximity, wave impact, elevation, species, size, growth habits, and tolerance to flooding, wind, and salt. But across the FEIS Alternatives Chapter (Chapter 5.0), none of the alternatives take tree conservation as a primary design objective. SEQRA's "hard look" standard requires more than a memo certifying the analysis was done - it requires demonstrating that retention was the default, that designs built around retention were genuinely developed, and that an independent review confirmed the analysis was real.

We ask BPCA to:

- Justify each removal individually. Publish, for each of the 500 trees marked for removal, the specific design constraint that made retention impossible - and where that constraint is itself a design choice (alignment, limits of work, foundation type, buffer assumption), the alternative considered to avoid the constraint, its tree-count effect, and the basis for rejecting it. Where this analysis has not been done, the appropriate response is not to certify that it was, but to do it.

- Develop a retention-first design alternative for each reach. Not a variation on the existing design - a design built from the assumption that tree retention is a primary objective, with its projected tree count, resilience tradeoffs, and the basis for acceptance or rejection.

- Submit both analyses for independent review by qualified arborists, flood engineers, and landscape architects with no financial relationship to the design-build contractor - and publish their findings on the public record. The current design-build team has a direct financial interest in the existing design; outside verification is required before residents can be expected to accept that 500 mature trees represent the minimum loss this resilience objective requires.

No further removals in any reach until the analyses for that reach have been published and independently reviewed.

Thank you for your time and engagement. We look forward to your responses on the public record.

Sincerely,