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December 17, 2009
The Honorable David Paterson
Governor
Executive Chamber
State Capitol
Albany, New York 12224
Dear Governor Paterson:
As representatives of Protect the Adirondacks! (PROTECT), we wish to share our deep concerns with a pattern of recent state policy decisions impacting the Adirondack Park.
Last month’s decision by your state agency representatives on the Adirondack Park Agency not to classify the waters of Lows Lake as Wilderness is a serious blot on your environmental record as Governor. In our staff’s 22 years of experience monitoring the APA, the reversal of all three state agency votes against a Wilderness issue in the Park, after having voted for Wilderness just two months prior, is unprecedented. It is an affront to a long and worthy record of gubernatorial actions to safeguard the Adirondack wilderness beginning in 1885. Furthermore, none of your representatives on the APA explained why they had reversed their votes. It is only the most recent demonstration of a lack of understanding or will to recognize and protect the Adirondack Park as a model of sound land use management.
Following public hearings and acting under the leadership of APA Chairman Curt Stiles, in September all three of your state agencies voted for Wilderness designation of Lows Lake and surrounding waterbodies. Then, your administration suffered a failure of will to protect the Park. Your administration yielded to local pressure by declaring one of those votes was improperly cast. Chairman Stiles then called a re-vote in November. All three state agency representatives reversed their vote on Lows Lake without any justification. None of the facts had changed. What changed was that local government brought pressure on your designees to reverse their September vote, and your administration meekly complied. Instead of seizing an important, legally required and popular opportunity to advance wilderness protection in the Adirondack Park, your administration bowed to narrow-minded, parochial interests. It was a shameful episode.
Over a longer period of time, far too many APA votes have been cast which favor parochial interests, and not the statewide interests of all New Yorkers for a park of such state, national and international importance. Approximately 2900 projects in the Park have been permitted by APA over the past decade. Yet, only one land use permit has been denied outright, and only one adjudicatory public hearing has been completed in all that time. APA Chair Curt Stiles and the staff are doing their very best to lead the APA, but they must have new legislative tools, a reformed APA Act and environmentally responsible, committed members who recognize their paramount responsibilities to protect the Park’s natural resources because those resources are the very foundation on which a Park communities are sustained and stronger Park-wide economy built.
We also cite the following additional examples that call into question your commitments to the Park:
Your DEC is trying to amend and weaken an important conservation easement in the Park (Heartwood Forestland Fund) which would enable 220 hunting camps, which amount to leased vacation homes, and ATV motorized access to those structures to remain permanently, despite the easement’s express intent to remove these uses for the benefit of the public in 2014. DEC should not be compromising conservation easements acquired in the public interest.
Your APA recently failed to appeal lower court decisions which excused serious land use violations on rural use farm lands in the Town of Essex, Essex County and impacted wetlands and shorelines bordering Silver Lake in Clinton County.
Snowmobile trail guidelines were adopted by APA which, while laudable in part, sanction motorized groomer vehicles on Wild Forest trails in the Adirondacks, vehicles which impair forever wild character and improperly facilitate snowmobile highways through the Forest Preserve. Only State Land Master Plan amendments following public hearings can authorize such vehicles.
Delays in acquiring Forest Preserve and conservation easements on the Finch Pruyn properties threaten the integrity of the Park. Investments from the Environmental Protection Fund in protecting these resources are needed in 2010.
Steep, ongoing declines in the staffing at the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation pose serious threats to the Park’s environmental quality, and its wildlife.
We know that you care about the Adirondack Park. However, as Governor you have a responsibility to proactively take concerted actions to build on a 120 year record of popular will to protect it. Therefore, we are asking you today to send clear signals that you can be an environmental leader. We ask that you:
Restore Lows Lake as fully designated Wilderness. Adopt the pending lands classification package, provided that the APA classifies the waters of Lows Lake as designated Wilderness - as called for in the State Land Master Plan. If necessary, direct your APA State agency designees to restore the September vote in full support of Chairman Stiles.
Stop DEC from weakening the Heartwood Forestland Fund Conservation Easement. By amending this easement, DEC would permit 220 leased vacation homes in the woods to remain permanently, with motorized access to each of them. Instead, the easement was designed to end such uses by 2014.
Place Strong Environmental Leaders on the APA. Nominate leading environmentalists to the APA who will undertake decisions which protect the Adirondack Park as a state, national and international treasure and who will have the courage of those convictions in difficult votes. There are two expired seats on the APA right now, and two more will be open next spring.
Protect critical lands and waters. In memory of Clarence Petty, the great Adirondack champion of conservation who died recently at age 104, we ask that you personally push in 2010 for an allocation of funds from the Environmental Protection Fund (EPF) to acquire Finch, Pruyn and Follensby Pond tracts for conservation easements and additions to the NYS Forest Preserve.
Create an Executive Order declaring that the primary objective guiding management of the NYS Forest Preserve shall be the achievement of wilderness character and the protection of ecological integrity
Meet with us as soon as possible to discuss the topics above as well as critically needed reform legislation for the Park, the issues of advancing wild land management, private land stewardship, sustainable community development planning and the park’s readiness to confront climate change. Let us share with you low or no cost measures you can implement as Governor which will insure a protected, wild land park for many generations to come.
Protect the Adirondacks! has a history of citizen involvement in the Adirondacks dating to 1901. We have worked with many Governors who have come to embrace the Adirondack Park and its legions of supporters across New York State. New Yorkers are ready to embrace you as an environmental leader. They must see you taking concerted actions like these to believe that you have the vision and courage to advance important policies and actions which may be unpopular at a parochial level, but which have great, statewide significance in the realization of a truly protected Adirondack Park. These actions will not cost the state a great deal of money during an extremely difficult economic recession. Instead, they can offer hope to millions statewide and globally that your leadership in 2010 and beyond will leave an environmental and Adirondack legacy of hope, opportunity and wildness for future generations. We look forward to meeting with you.
On behalf of our 35 Directors and 5000 members, we are,
Very sincerely,
Chuck Clusen, Chairman and CEO
Lorraine Duvall, Vice-Chair
Dave Gibson, Executive Director
Dan Plumley, Director, Conservation Programs
Ken Strike, Co-Chair, Conservation Advocacy Committee
Dale Jeffers, Co-Chair, Conservation Advocacy Committee
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