On October 14, 2026 the New York State Office of Renewable Energy Siting and Electric Transmission (ORES), part of the Department of Public Service, denied the permit (decision and press release) for Hecate Energy’s 42 MW Shepherd’s Run solar project in the Town of Copake, Columbia County (ORES DMM Matter Number 24-03041). In June 2024 I wrote about this project in Solar Developer “Disinformation” Reality after Hecate’s project director blamed fossil-fuel funded disinformation for local opposition. At that time I concluded that the first application was rejected only because of a last-minute loss of land control and that, but for that technicality, it would have been approved despite well-founded local concerns. This time the application was denied on the merits. This post describes what happened since my earlier post and Hecate’s options.
I have followed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act) since it was first proposed, submitted comments on the Climate Act implementation plan. The opinions expressed in this post do not reflect the position of any of my previous employers or any other organization I have been associated with, these comments are mine alone. I acknowledge the use of Perplexity AI to research the material summarized in this article and prepare an initial draft.
Overview
ORES was created in 2020 to speed permitting of large renewable facilities and can override local laws it finds “unreasonably burdensome” in view of the Climate Act targets. According to the DPS press release, ORES has issued permits for 38 renewable facilities totaling more than 5,400 MW since 2020. This is only the third time a large renewable project has been denied through a state permitting process, and two of the three denials are Shepherd’s Run.
From Dismissal to Second Application
The project was first proposed in 2017 as a 60 MW facility near the intersection of Routes 23 and 7 in Copake, NY. Note that in my 2024 post I described the earlier project as 42 MW but the original application was for 60 MW. ORES issued a draft permit on October 24, 2023 but in January 2024 Hecate lost control of 59.77 acres when a parcel was sold, as described in a letter from State Senator Michelle Hinchey. On February 6, 2024 the ORES Executive Director dismissed that application without prejudice to a new application for a modified facility.
Hecate did not walk away. According to an ORES ruling on a Town motion, Hecate began pre-application filings for a downsized project on February 27, 2024 and filed the new 42 MW application on December 23, 2024. A Town motion to reject the application was denied. The redesigned project would occupy about 215 non-contiguous acres of a 723-acre site of farmland, forest, streams, and wetlands, part of which lies in a FEMA Zone A flood hazard area, according to a Hodgson Russ summary.
ORES issued two notices of incomplete application in 2025, the second on June 27, 2025 listing eleven deficiencies, as reported by The Millerton News. That summer a Hecate lender that had loaned the company $82 million asked the Delaware Chancery Court for a restraining order, claiming “Hecate Holdings is woefully insolvent, strapped for cash, and drastically overleveraged.” A second creditor followed with a similar motion. Hecate denied the claims. Sensible Solar for Rural New York asked ORES to hold the application pending due diligence on Hecate’s finances.
ORES nonetheless deemed the application complete on September 19, 2025 and published draft permit conditions on November 18, 2025, finding that the project “avoids, minimizes, or mitigates, to the maximum extent practicable, potential significant adverse environmental impacts,” according to The Millerton News. Importantly, draft permit condition 3(b) required Hecate to comply with Copake’s floodplain law, Chapter 135. Public comment hearings were held in Copake on January 21 and 22, 2026, with a virtual hearing on January 27, where speakers were overwhelmingly opposed.
The Issues Ruling and Interim Decision
Hecate asked to be exempted from the Town’s floodplain code. On June 25, 2026 administrative law judges (ALJs) Maureen Leary and Dawn MacKillop-Soller issued a 225-page ruling that refused the waiver and found that Hecate relied on outdated wetlands delineations from 2019 and 2020, as reported by Mid-Hudson News. They ordered new field studies and an evaluation of whether any wetlands qualify as “wetlands of unusual importance.” However, they concluded these problems could be fixed through post-permit compliance filings.
Both Hecate and the Town appealed. On August 13, 2026 Interim Executive Director Jason Zehr disagreed on that key point. According to Hodgson Russ, he found that “where record evidence is absent, the use of compliance filings is inadequate, inasmuch as the information obtained in such filing may result in a major project modification, the imposition of additional site-specific conditions, or even permit denial.” He remanded the wetlands and floodplain issues for an expedited adjudicatory hearing and ordered a revised draft permit put out for comment. Hecate agreed to extend the decision deadline to October 19, 2026.
The Hearing and Recommended Decision
The adjudicatory hearing was held at Copake Town Hall on September 14, 2026. ORES staff, Hecate, and the Town were the parties, and the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) provided evidence. After the hearing ORES staff still recommended that the draft permit be made final with “further analysis of wetlands” and said no further conditions were needed to address Chapter 135.
The ALJs disagreed. Their October 5 Hearing Report recommended denial. According to Hodgson Russ the ALJs found:
- The wetlands delineation relied on 2019/2020 fieldwork and used the Army Corps of Engineers manual rather than the DEC manual with New York-specific vegetation criteria.
- Several wetlands, including some beneath proposed arrays, were treated as unregulated even though they connect to a Class I wetland.
- Hecate did not look for wetlands of unusual importance.
- Hecate never provided a base flood elevation, and its hydrology study used a 100-year, 24-hour storm depth of 5.29 inches rather than the NOAA value of 7.96 inches, without explanation.
- Even on its own estimates, an inverter and several posts would need to be moved or raised, but those changes were not in the application, nor was a plan to stow panels during a power loss.
As a meteorologist I find the rainfall input telling. A design storm one-third smaller than the NOAA standard is not a minor choice in a flood zone.
The ALJs also wrote that “Hecate’s actions during the adjudicatory phase were not in good faith,” according to The Millerton News. Hecate limited the Town’s experts to already-delineated areas and did not provide access until the day before the hearing.
The Final Decision
The Final Decision adopts the ALJs’ ultimate recommendation but departs from some of their reasoning. It rests on two independent grounds.
First, on floodplains, the Interim Executive Director concurred with DEC that Chapter 135 implements the National Flood Insurance Program under Environmental Conservation Law Article 36, that the Town has exclusive authority to determine compliance, and that ORES cannot waive it. Article VIII still requires ORES to make an affirmative finding that the project can comply. He found the evidence absent on base flood elevations, the reliability of the hydrology inputs, whether components would be inundated, how panels would be controlled during a flood, and siting near or within a floodway.
Second, on wetlands, he found the record “not clear as to the full extent of wetland resources in the project area.” The Legislature amended the freshwater wetlands law in 2022 to protect smaller wetlands of “unusual importance,” including those in floodways or in watersheds prone to severe storm flooding. The delineation report was labeled “Updated January 2023” but never mentioned the amended definition. He also called Hecate’s site access restrictions “inexplicable and unacceptable.”
However, the decision defends ORES staff. The ALJs had found the April 2024 wetlands jurisdictional determination invalid because it reissued the 2021 determination without new data, a site visit, or the DEC consultation it claimed. The Interim Executive Director held that the burden of producing accurate information “unequivocally falls on the Applicant” and that staff’s reliance on the earlier determination was a reasonable exercise of professional judgment. In a footnote he conceded that in the future “ORES best practice should be to conduct a site visit to determine whether changes in law may change the impacts analysis.”
Hecate’s Options
Hecate now has a few options:
- Hecate can walk away, which would be the most rational response. After nine years and two failed applications, with lenders claiming it is insolvent, it is hard to see the business case for continuing.
- Hecate can appeal the permit denial to the Appellate Division, Third Department, in the form of an original Article 78 proceeding. Under the siting statute, now Public Service Law § 146 as noted in a recent Third Department decision, the petition must be filed within 90 days of the final decision. If that happens the town should be a necessary party. Because the denial rests on missing evidence that Hecate had the burden to provide, that would be an uphill fight.
- Hecate can complete updated wetlands delineations and flood zone analysis, and attempt to file a third application. If that happens the town could file an immediate motion to dismiss based on caselaw indicating administrative permit denials should be final. A third application would also have to meet DEC’s 2025 wetland regulations, and any new delineation would have to cover the wetlands of unusual importance that Hecate never looked for.
Discussion
The press release emphasizes that the Town used $42,000 in local agency account funds to hire experts and that “the Town’s participation, including expert evidence concerning wetlands and flood protection, contributed to the record.” That is true, but it understates what happened. ORES staff found the application complete, issued a draft permit, and recommended issuance even after the hearing. DEC’s position on Chapter 135, the ALJs’ findings, and the Town’s experts are what produced the denial. Copake has been fighting this project with its own attorneys and engineers since 2020, and I would be surprised if $42,000 covered more than a small fraction of those costs. Most towns do not have Copake’s resources.
ORES accepted a wetlands determination based on 2019 and 2020 data that ignored a 2022 change in state law, and only adversarial review exposed the problem. Had a town without Copake’s resources faced this application, I believe the permit would have been issued.
It is worth returning to the “disinformation” claim. In 2024 Hecate’s project director argued that opponents relied “on false or misleading claims about farmland being permanently destroyed, adverse impacts to nearby watersheds, and reduction in property values.” The watershed concerns turned out to be the reason the permit was denied. The record showed that Hecate’s own analysis understated the wetlands and flood risk on the site.
Finally, the issue I emphasized in 2024 was not addressed. Representative Josh Riley says the project would have converted roughly 215 acres of productive farmland. My earlier analysis showed the project exceeded the Department of Agriculture and Markets guideline of no more than 10% conversion of the best soils. The denial turned on wetlands and floodplains, not farmland. The Hochul Administration still does not require utility-scale solar developers to meet the Agriculture and Markets prime farmland guidelines.
Conclusion
Shepherd’s Run was denied because Hecate could not show that its project would avoid wetland impacts or comply with a floodplain law tied to federal flood insurance. That is the right outcome. But it took nine years, two applications, a determined and well-funded town, a DEC intervention, and two judges willing to make what one observer described as the first recommendation by DPS judges to deny a solar permit since ORES was created. The real lesson is that the ORES process approves projects unless someone with the money and expertise to build an evidentiary record proves the developer wrong. Siting standards that protect farmland, wetlands, and host communities should be built into the rules, not left to local governments to enforce by litigation.
