The New York Upstate Chapter of the American Planning Association recently awarded their 2014 Planning Excellence Award for Best Practice to New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC’s) new online Environmental Assessment Form tools: the EAF Workbooks and the EAF Mapper application. These tools were developed by DEC, environmental planning consultants Nan Stolzenburg (Community Planning & Environmental Associates), Don Meltz (Don Meltz Planning and GIS), and the geographic information system development firm Fountains Spatial. The annual Planning Excellence Award for Best Practice is given to a planning tool, practice, program, project, or process that is a significant advancement to specific elements of…
Category: News
Blog posts containing news related to my career, business, or Marist College
SEQR Environmental Assessment Forms Workshop
New SEQR Environmental Assessment Forms Last year, the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) adopted revised model environmental assessment forms (EAFs). This was the first major update to the Full EAF (FEAF) since 1978 and to the Short EAF (SEAF) since its last revision in 1987. During development of the new EAF’s, some concerns were raised about the level of detail needed to complete the new forms. As a result, DEC contracted with Nan Stolzenburg and Don Meltz to develop a set of online workbooks to provide additional guidance for completing them. The effective date for the revised EAFs is…
New Website Launched at donmeltz.com
A major facelift to the old website If you’ve been here before you’ll notice a whole new look to my website and a few new things have been added. The site has been completely redone from the ground up. Here’s a brief overview of what’s changed: Integration The primary goal for doing the redesign was to integrate my various online services as much as possible. Previously I had both a website and a blog, but they were hosted in different places and the design was different for each. The same was true for my map site. I also had a…
Columbia County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Plan
The Columbia County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Plan is out for public review I worked on the mapping and spatial analysis aspects of this plan. I helped the board identify all of the active farmland in the county, and lead them through a LESA process, producing a prioritized list of farms and farmland to protect. The press release follows: To help guide the sustainability of agriculture on a county-wide basis, the Columbia County Agricultural and Farmland Protection Board (AFPB) has developed a county-wide plan focused on agricultural economic development and farmland protection. The culmination of this two year project is…