MidHudsonNews reports: A State Supreme Court justice has ruled that Orange County should not have tried to sell capacity at its expanded sewer treatment plant in Harriman to municipalities outside the district until it completed an environmental review.

In a decision on an Article 78 lawsuit filed by the Village of Kiryas Joel, Justice Francis Nicolai wrote that “at a bare minimum, the county should have undertaken to prepare a Supplement Environmental Impact Statement to evaluate relevant environmental concerns to the Orange County Sewer District members and their proposed increased needs.”

The plant serves Kiryas Joel, the villages of Harriman and Monroe and part of the Town of Monroe.

The county had wanted to allow other communities to use part of the expanded capacity, including the towns of Chester, Monroe, Woodbury and Blooming Grove and the villages of Chester, Woodbury and South Blooming Grove.