PROTECT the Adirondacks! has hired Peter Bauer as its new Executive Director.

Starting full-time after Labor Day, Bauer will coordinate PROTECT’s citizen
advocacy activities and provide leadership to monitor public agencies, conduct
research, and manage the organization’s programs for the Adirondack Park.

For more information:

Chuck Clusen, co-chair, 202-289-2412
Lorraine Duvall, co-chair, 518-576-9109
Robert Harrison, co-chair, 518-494-7349
Peter Bauer 518-796-0112

Adirondack Park—PROTECT the Adirondacks! is pleased to announce that its Board of
Directors has hired accomplished activist Peter Bauer as its new Executive Director. Bauer
brings to PROTECT more than 20 years of experience in Adirondack Park policy, grassroots
organizing, environmental advocacy, and not-for-profit management.

Before he begins full-time work for PROTECT after Labor Day, Bauer will continue to serve
until the end of July in his current position as Executive Director for the FUND for Lake
George, a position he has held since 2007. Bauer had previously served for thirteen years as
Executive Director of the Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks (RCPA), one of
the two groups that merged in 2010 to form PROTECT. “I could not be more pleased with
the results of our search for an Executive Director, says Board Co-chair Bob Harrison. “I
have known and worked closely with Peter for over 10 years. He has the respect of all
stakeholders in the Park, friend and foe alike. I am very excited with the promise that his
leadership of PROTECT holds for the future of the Adirondack Park.”

Peter Bauer brings to PROTECT a wealth of experience in environmental policy and
advocacy for the Adirondack Park. He has successfully advocated for the protection of new
wildlands; helped to pass state laws on jet skis and acid rain; advanced state policy on
motorized uses of the Forest Preserve; and conducted research that has educated the public
and influenced management policies and practices for the Forest Preserve and the
Adirondack Park. Among Bauer’s recent projects for the FUND for Lake George are his
work to develop and publish the award-winning Do-It-Yourself Water Quality: A
Landowner’s Guide to Property Management that Protects Lake George; a new report on
trends from thirty years of collaborative water quality monitoring; new programs for aquatic
invasive species control, and creation of a new park and stormwater treatment system in
collaboration with local communities.

Perhaps most important for PROTECT’s larger mission is Bauer’s proven ability to
effectively organize the voices of Adirondack residents and people throughout New York
who want stronger protections for the largest and most important state park in the nation.
Peter Bauer stated “I am grateful for this unique opportunity. I am very impressed with
PROTECT’s citizen advocacy approach, with the outstanding grassroots board they have
built, and with their leadership on many of the critical issues facing the Adirondack Park.”

PROTECT Board Co-chair Lorraine Duvall said “What a combination of resources
PROTECT has now assembled for defending the principles upon which the Adirondack Park
was founded–a dynamic proven leader as our new Executive Director, a solid base of
grassroots members and supporters, and a diverse Board of Directors representing 500 years
of environmental activism. The time is now and we are ready.”

When he takes up PROTECT’s reins in the fall, Peter Bauer will be astride ongoing
initiatives to defend against several recent, major threats to the integrity of the Park’s private
and public lands. With Sierra Club support, PROTECT has taken legal action against the
Adirondack Park Agency’s (APA) January decision to permit the Adirondack Club and
Resort project, the largest development in the history of the Park. Chief among its threats
PROTECT opposes the precedent for permitting habitat-fragmenting, recreational housing
sprawl across many thousands of acres of similarly protected private lands throughout the
Park. In another recent decision, one that excluded public oversight, the APA approved the
DEC’s plans to increase motorized access to 1.5 million acres of “forever wild” public lands
with the construction of new, high-speed snowmobile “trails”. Bauer will oversee
PROTECT’s initiatives not only to field-monitor DEC and permitted town construction of
these new roads, but also to strengthen the statutes that are now interpreted as allowing the
DEC to re-negotiate with owners of easement lands, changing provisions originally intended
to provide public benefits.

“I am totally exhilarated by Peter Bauer agreeing to become PROTECT’s executive director.
No one is more knowledgeable of the Adirondacks, or as seasoned by years of organizing
and motivating grassroots folks to pursue strong environmental action for the protection of
the Adirondacks. He exhibits mastery and skill at getting the word out, building public
support and persuading decision makers to make sound environmental protection decisions”
said Chuck Clusen, PROTECT co-chair.

In addition to coordinating PROTECT’s independent public oversight of New York State’s
management of the Adirondack Park, Bauer will oversee both PROTECT’s water quality
monitoring and forest stewardship programs.

“The Adirondack Park landscape is vibrant and lively. The communities, people, politics and
public issues are vibrant and lively too. I’ve been fortunate to work with some terrific groups
and with many terrific people to try and earn a place in the conservation tradition of the
Adirondack Park that heralds from early calls to create ‘a central park for the world’ to later
calls about the Adirondack Park as a ‘landscape of hope’ or a ‘great experiment in
conservation’. I’m very pleased to join with PROTECT at this point in my life and dedicate
my energies in trying to defend this amazing place” said Peter Bauer.

Those interested in following the changes that will result from Peter Bauer’s new role as
Executive Director; in learning more about PROTECT’s initiatives and programs; or in
becoming a member are invited to visit the organization’s website at protectadks.org.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, March 20, 2012

For More Information:

Protect the Adirondacks!

Bob Glennon
518-891-5195
oseetahbob@yahoo.com

John Caffry
518-792-1582
jcaffry@caffrylawoffice.com

Sierra Club

Roger Downs
518-426-9144
roger.downs@sierraclub.org

Charlie Morrison
518-583-2212
charlescmorrisonjr@gmail.com

PROTECT THE ADIRONDACKS!, SIERRA CLUB AND ADJOINING LANDOWNERS CHALLENGE ADIRONDACK PARK AGENCY’S APPROVAL OF LARGEST DEVELOPMENT PROJECT TO EVER COME BEFORE IT

ALBANY–The grassroots environmental group Protect the Adirondacks!, the Sierra Club, and three nearby landowners today sued the Adirondack Park Agency, the Department of Environmental Conservation, and the developer proposing the 700+ unit “Adirondack Club and Resort” mountainside project in the Town of Tupper Lake, Franklin County, which was approved by the Agency on January 20. The suit, filed in the Supreme Court in Albany County, and expected to be transferred by that court to the Appellate Division, Third Department, is returnable on May 11.

“When Governor Rockefeller signed the law creating the APA, he is said to have proclaimed ‘The Adirondacks are saved forever’,” said Bob Glennon of PROTECT!, a former Counsel and Executive Director of the Agency who is assisting in the lawsuit. “He was tragically wrong. It is now up to Governor Cuomo, who has often visited the Adirondacks with his family, and who has proven he can get things done in Albany, to give the agency charged with preserving the largest natural area east of the Mississippi for 19 million New Yorkers and future generations, a badly-needed backbone implant.”

“In the last few years APA has become a rogue agency that ignores the law for political ends” said John Caffry of PROTECT!, the lead attorney in the case. “Its rubber-stamp approval of this project, the largest ever to come before it, is only the latest example of this unfortunate trend.”

“For years, the Adirondack Park Agency has failed to adequately protect land classified as ‘Resource Management’ under the APA Act,” stated Roger Downs, Conservation Director of the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter. “The Act created this land classification category for the purpose of preserving open land by protecting agricultural and timber management lands in the Adirondack Park, not for multi-million dollar McMansions. It is past the time for the APA to stop cutting corners with its existing laws and regulations and to act to protect New York’s great wilderness legacy.”

“Born and raised in New York State, I have always loved the Adirondacks,”
said Dr. Phyllis Thompson, an adjoining landowner and a co-petitioner in the case. “It saddens me, it angers me, to see that the APA statutes have not been enforced.”

On January 20, following 19 days of hearings and four years of fruitless and sporadic “mediation sessions” and other delays by the developer, Preserve Associates, LLC, the Agency voted 10-1 to approve the 6,235-acre ACR project, comprised of 206 single family dwellings, 453 units in 125 multifamily dwellings, a 60-room inn with a restaurant, a ski lodge and a ski services building, a gym and recreation center, a spa/health club, an amphitheater, a clubhouse, an equestrian center, a marina, a 280,000-gallon water storage tank, 15 miles of electric transmission lines, a sewage pump station, a community wastewater treatment plant and collection system, 10 miles of roads to be dedicated, and 5+ miles of private roads.

While much of the intensive development is proposed for lands classified “Moderate Intensity Use,” where the law intends for it take place, of major concern to PROTECT! and the Sierra Club, is the proposed fragmentation of 4,805 acres of undeveloped forest lands classified “Resource Management” by the Adirondack Park Agency Act, into 35 “Great Camp” lots and 45 other smaller lots. Resource management lands are described in the APA Act as those “where the need to protect, manage and enhance forest, agricultural, recreational and open space resources is of paramount importance because of overriding natural resource and public considerations,” mentioning, among other development constraints, shallow soils, severe slopes, wetlands, critical wildlife habitats and habitats of rare and endangered plant and animal species. Their “basic purposes and objectives” are “to protect the delicate physical and biological resources, encourage proper and economic management of forest, agricultural and recreational resources and preserve the open spaces that are essential and basic to the unique character of the park.”

PROTECT!, the Sierra Club and the co-petitioners charge that the APA violated the above components of its legal mandate. For example, despite having formally asked the developer to prepare a four-season, comprehensive wildlife study no less than four times, the Agency approved the fragmentation of the undeveloped forest lands without ever having received it. Even more puzzling is the Agency’s approval of the project on the condition that more studies of impacts to wildlife would be done after that approval, rather than beforehand.

None of the “Great Camp” lots or the 45 other lots in the Resource Management lands are sited, as the statute calls for, “in small clusters on carefully-selected and well designed sites.”

The developer plans, and the Agency approved, without having DEC’s views as to its legality, a valet boat launching service, trailering lot owners’ boats to a DEC-operated boat launching site on Tupper Lake, monopolizing a public facility with their sheer numbers and engaging in a commercial use thereon, in violation of several State regulations and the “forever wild” clause of the State Constitution.

The initial road, sewer, water and electric infrastructure for the project is proposed to be financed by $36 million in bonds to be issued by the Franklin County Industrial Development Agency, which PROTECT! and the Sierra Club claim is illegal. The IDA’s own bond counsel has also questioned the novel scheme.

The suit also alleges the APA violated its own regulations in numerous respects, including allowing illegal “ex parte” contacts (contacts not on notice to the other parties to the proceeding) between the developer’s representatives and APA’s executive staff.

In upholding the Adirondack Park Agency Act against a “home rule” attack in 1977, the Chief Judge, writing for a unanimous Court of Appeals, said:

“[P]reserving the priceless Adirondack Park through a comprehensive land use and development plan is most decidedly a substantial State concern, as it is most decidedly not merely 119 separate local concerns…All but conclusive of this aspect of the issue is the constitutional and legislative history stretching over 80 years to preserve the Adirondack Area from despoliation, exploitation, and destruction by a contemporary generation in disregard of the generations to come.

“In the face of increasing threats to and concern with the environment, it is no longer true, if it ever was, that the preservation and development of the vast Adirondack spaces, with their unique abundance of natural resources–land, timber, wildlife, and water–should not be of the greatest moment to all people of the State. These too relate to life, health and the quality of life.”

Caffry, Downs and Glennon will hold a press briefing at 11 a.m. on Thursday, March 22 in the Legislative Correspondents’ Association room in the Legislative Office Building in Albany.

PROTECT! is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. Donations in support of the lawsuit will be most appreciated. Checks may be made out to “Protect the Adirondacks” with “Adirondack Legal Defense Fund” in the memo line and mailed to PROTECT, Box 4124, Schenectady, NY 12304. PROTECT!’s website is www.protectadks.org.

Legal Briefs

Notice of Petition C
Petition C

Protect the Adirondacks!
PO Box 4124
Schenectady, New York 12304

New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
Bureau of Wildlife
625 Broadway
Albany, New York
By e-mail

RE: Bobcat Management Plan

To Whom it May Concern:

Protect opposes implementation of the “management Plan for Bobcat in New York State 2012-2017” because it is not based on a “scientifically sound” study of the state’s bobcat population, as required by the DEC Bureau of Wildlife’s own mission statement. We ask that this study be completed before any further plan to manage bobcat is considered.

The DEC study only solicited trappers and small game hunters to gain preliminary input regarding the future management of the bobcat species, according to its own admission (Bobcat Management Plan, at 6). They are then using this data as the entire base of their plan to manage the bobcat “resource”. This is simply bad science. This research promotes a skewed approach to data collection: by their own admission this data is misleading (at 10) because trapping efforts vary greatly with factors such as pelt prices and environmental factors. In addition few hunters have the skills or inclination to hunt bobcat, meaning that hunting results are not statistically reliable when such small numbers are involved.

There can be no question that there are scientific methods that wildlife experts use to collect data on bobcats, such as motion sensor camera traps, live cage traps to provide evidence of predator/prey interactions and population changes before making such determinations on population control by hunting and trapping. Similar strategies are being employed by other states such as New Jersey, and with great success.

In addition to the draft plan being in conflict with the Bureau of Wildlife’s own mission statement, it completely analyzed the bobcat outside of the place it holds in the complex ecosystems of New York State. The bobcat is a major predator and has clear impacts on other wildlife populations. In addition, the Adirondack Park, home to the DEC estimate of 3000 bobcats, 60% of the states total population, is mosaic of distinct ecosystems, managed around core wilderness areas that are constitutionally protected as “forever wild” under Article 14. The clear meaning of “forever wild” is that these ecosystems maintain dynamic populations of each of the species that contributes to these unique environments. This plan contains not only no data about this, but not even any discussion. Moreover, a good part of the remaining bobcat population, only 2000 statewide based on this unscientific DEC estimate, is related to this wilderness ecosystem. Indeed, among the reasons for the increase in bobcat populations in the southern tier is an increase in population in neighboring Pennsylvania, another related ecosystem that is not evaluated at all in this plan.

The bias and lack of scientific study in the plan is revealed by its operational conclusions, increased hunting and trapping. Indeed, the “benefit of “greatly simplify hunting and trapping season dates by making them consistent throughout much of the state” is absolute nonsense. The state has long been divided for purposes of wildlife management into various zones, with hunting and trapping permitted on one side of a highway and prohibited on the other. While doubtlessly this annoys some people, not one can contest the fact that it is necessary in the management of wildlife, given the wide range of habitats in such a large and diverse state. It is absolutely not a significant problem for hunters and trappers to face different bobcat seasons in different parts of the state. That this should be flaunted as some “benefit” in the plan greatly exaggerates the convenience of hunters and trappers over sound scientific management of bobcats. Indeed, parks, “forever wild” and “wild forest” designations are completely ignored.

The Draft Plan does not explain with any scientific evidence how the number of bobcats harvested has been directly correlated to a proven increase in population densities: we cannot scientifically accept hunting and trapping reports as the sole source of this data. The Plan then overstates assumptions in this data. In fact, for the Adirondack Region the data is even less meaningful due to lower current population densities of bobcats (5 per 100 square miles). Due to this, the Park’s regions are listed as a continued harvest area, but the Plan offers no scientific data to support a continued harvest given such low densities – in areas that include wilderness. Is it not logical to require that harvesting in this area should be further restricted, to permit an increase in bobcat populations, instead of simply maintaining existing population levels? If we have lower bobcat population in the Catskills and Adirondacks might this not indicate a problem with current management strategies based on hunting and trapping? Without careful scientific study, how does the DEC even know?

To entirely focus the report on making the bobcat “resource” increasingly available for harvest by hunters and trappers rather than on scientific study of conservation strategies also denies the history of bobcat destruction in New York and the rest of the United States. The species was hunted and trapped to near extinction, leading to banning of both practices. Fortunately for all, the species has recovered, but it is still listed as endangered in Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). This recovery cannot be assumed to be permanent, nor complete. It is only careful scientific study of the current bobcat population that can adequately supervise this continuing recovery.

Somewhat cynically the Draft Plan calls for “minimizing the damage and nuisance” caused by bobcats. It then reports that there were absolutely no negative contacts between bobcats and humans and 13 permits issued to kill “nuisance” bobcats around domestic animals. If “nuisance permits” are the best means to address so few animals statewide, the reliance on hunting and trapping is completely misplaced – aimed at the entire population of bobcats and not narrowly focused on nuisance animals. And, of course, in wilderness areas there are no nuisance bobcats at all, so the lack of specificity in the plan is glaring.

The entire role of the DEC in meeting the public desire for enjoyment of wildlife somehow merges with the interests of the few bobcat hunters and trappers. To see a bobcat in the wild is a rare and memorable achievement for any hiker, snowmobiler, or motorist. Reducing populations reduces the chance for such a sighting.

Bobcats are top end predators on the ecological food chain. The fact is that bobcats pose no threat at all to humans and serve a vital role in managing populations of rats, mice, and deer in the Adirondacks that, again, has not been scientifically studied in this Draft Plan. The DEC should be doing ecological research to better understand bobcat habitat needs and requirements, rather than promoting an indiscrimant plan to decrease overall numbers statewide, regardless of local ecology. Bobcats and other top predators usually sustain increases in population as a result of increases in available prey.

Warmer winters as a result of climate change have shifted deer and other prey populations and allow conditions that favor bobcats which may be causing some local increases in population. This is a natural response and allows for the control of ecological habitat destruction vector born diseases caused by over population of nuisance species such as rodents and under story browsers such as deer. Left to nature, the species will self regulate once the natural balance is restored. Increases in road kills, decrease of habitat and natural predation by larger birds of prey, such as owls, larger hawks, and eagles, and coyotes will, in turn, control the population of bobcats, if increases should occur. Some research suggests that the bobcat population is already stabilizing in areas such as parts of Ontario as a result of natural balance.

The goal of any statewide plan for the management of any wildlife species must be to move toward a natural balance of species, consistent with a wide range of ecological conditions that can include human needs, but this has to be base on careful scientific study, taking full account of the vast range of ecological conditions that exist in New York State. This study completely fails to either use a scientific method or take even a rudimentary account of the ecological factors that should influence bobcat management. We ask first, that a moratorium on all hunting and trapping of bobcat be implemented in New York State pending a scientific study of New York State’s bobcat population, or, in the least that such a moratorium be put in place in the Adirondack Forest Preserve, second, we urge using this study as a basis for developing a future bobcat management plan that meets the requirements of the law.

Sincerely.

Sid Harring
Co-Chair
Conservation Advocacy Committee

Filed; Feb. 16, 2012

February 8, 2012

In the Adirondacks, Joy and Fear Over What a Resort May Bring
By LISA W. FODERARO

TUPPER LAKE, N.Y. — This once-proud logging town in the northern Adirondacks has an embarrassment of natural riches: forested mountains, crystalline lakes, clean air and trout-filled streams. But a string of economic blows has left the downtown pocked with vacancies and has cut the population by one-fifth.

“Without something happening,” the town supervisor, Roger Amell, said, “we’re going to be a ghost town.”

That something arrived last month, when the Adirondack Park Agency, which governs land use in the state park, approved a resort development on 6,300 acres here. The project, the Adirondack Club and Resort, calls for more than 650 units of housing, a hotel, a ski area, a marina and an equestrian center. It is the largest development the agency has ever approved.

The approval came after a nearly decade-long clash between environmentalists and pro-development residents, with the park agency caught in the middle. The contest was depicted by many as a tug of war for the soul of the Adirondacks, a park whose six million acres are almost evenly divided between public forest preserve and privately owned land.

Environmental advocates argued that the resort proposal would set a dangerous precedent by carving up a large section of backcountry for condominiums and single-family homes, along with “great camps” on parcels ranging from 25 to several hundred acres.

Local officials and many year-round residents countered that the plan was exactly what the Adirondacks needed — a new four-season draw that would jump-start the ailing economy of Tupper Lake and serve as a model for smart growth in other struggling towns. Besides, they said, the privately owned backcountry is hardly pristine, with logging roads and hunting cabins among stands of sugar maple, yellow birch and beech trees that have been harvested for decades.

The park agency imposed hundreds of conditions on the project, including an earth-hued color scheme, minimal clearing of vegetation and downcast lighting (to avoid light pollution). Eighty-five percent of the property will be left in its natural state; of the most sensitive land — 4,740 acres of backcountry designated as “resource management” land — 140 acres will actually be built on, with houses sprinkled throughout the site, and the rest preserved through deed restrictions.

“That’s a huge win, as far as I’m concerned,” said Leilani Crafts Ulrich, chairwoman of the Adirondack Park Agency, noting that the existing zoning laws would have allowed far greater density. “What would have happened to this piece of property if it were not master-planned and developed piecemeal instead?”

The approval by the agency and the groundswell of local support for the development preceding it reflect a growing feeling in the area that the “human ecosystem” of the Adirondacks is in trouble, as Jim LaValley, a real estate broker here, put it.

A 2009 report from the Adirondack Association of Towns and Villages offers a snapshot of the area’s problems. School enrollments across the park’s 103 towns and villages fell by 329 students annually from 2000 to 2007, the equivalent of losing one average-size school district every 19 months. The report, noting that the average age of residents was almost 43, projected that by 2020, only the west coast of Florida would surpass the Adirondacks as the nation’s oldest region.

Last fall, Adirondack Life magazine ran a cover story titled “The Other Endangered Species,” referring, of course, to people. And Mayor Clyde Rabideau of Saranac Lake, a nearby village, recently coined the phrase: “We are all Tupper Lakers.”

Hours after the park agency’s board voted to approve the resort, dozens of supporters poured into the Park Restaurant and Woodsmen’s Tavern here to celebrate. There were speeches and backslapping over pints of Saranac Pale Ale and a local favorite, poutine, a dish of French fries, cheese curds and gravy that originated in Canada.

It did not hurt, supporters of the project say, that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a frequent visitor to Saranac Lake, has made economic development a centerpiece of his second year in office. Mr. Cuomo recently appointed Mrs. Ulrich chairwoman of the park agency’s board, and last week he said of the planned resort, “There’s a delicate balance: we want to protect, we want to preserve, but people also need to make a living, and the region has to be economically viable.”

Garry Douglas, president of the North Country Chamber of Commerce, said of the thriving ski town that has hosted two Winter Olympics: “People from New York City visit Lake Placid and say, ‘I don’t see the problem.’ But you only have to go a few miles outside of Lake Placid to see some of the worst poverty in the state of New York.”

While handsome log homes can be glimpsed along Tupper Lake’s back roads, more visible are rickety trailers with thin walls that are a poor match for frigid winters. Downtown, the business district is a study in rural decline, with 1960s-style motel signs looking more dated than retro, and four former clothing stores among the vacancies.

But for the environmental advocates who had long poked holes in the resort plan, the agency’s approval was a bitter defeat. Various groups had raised concerns about the marketability of such housing, the developers’ own finances and the fragmenting of wildlife habitat through new roads and driveways.

“With this vote, it is now clear that the park’s anti-environment and pro-development forces have achieved their long-term goal of capturing control of the park agency,” said John Caffry, a lawyer and board member for Protect the Adirondacks, an environmental group. “It will be open season on subdividing the park’s backcountry lands.”

Environmental groups have until April 1 to file a legal challenge to the park agency’s approval of the project. “We are actively considering our options,” Mr. Caffry said.

In the early decades of the Adirondack Park Agency, which was formed in 1971, tensions around private-property rights occasionally turned violent.

That pitch of anger has subsided. Now even some environmental groups talk about the importance of development. One such group, the Adirondack Council, endorsed the resort plan in the end. Still, the council’s executive director, Brian L. Houseal, wants stronger protections in the future for the park’s resource management lands, which historically were used for forestry but allow housing on very large parcels.

“We all know the Adirondacks need economic development,” Mr. Houseal said. “Our belief is that the future is in revitalizing the town centers and hamlets. We must protect the wild character and ecological integrity of the backcountry because that’s the core value of the Adirondacks.”

For many in Tupper Lake, population 5,971, ground cannot break soon enough on the new resort, whose owners will pay to upgrade an existing town golf course. Tom Lawson, with the development team, said the resort project, to be built over 15 years, would generate at least 550 jobs. When completed, he said, the resort will increase the town’s tax base by $500 million. “Tupper Lake can’t happen without the Adirondack Club, and the Adirondack Club can’t happen without Tupper Lake,” he said.

Perhaps more than anything, residents dream of jobs. They have witnessed the shuttering of the only department store in town, the departure of a local plastics factory and the closing of the Big Tupper ski area. Under the resort plan, the ski area, which has since reopened with volunteers, will be expanded.

“I’m an unemployed truck driver, so it’s great,” Terry Miller, 52, said of the resort. “It’ll mean more work here for everyone.”

August 12th, 2012
Clean Waters Benefit, The Blue Mountain Center , Blue Mountain Lake. Help support Protect’s Adirondack Lakes Assessment Project and other programs of Protect.

Protect’s Annual meeting, being held at Tapawingo, a unique and secluded private home on Lake Placid will be on Saturday June 30th.

Please Contact us if you wish to attend.

RAYBROOK, NY—The decision by the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) to approve the massive Adirondack Club and Resort (ACR) project is an abdication of the Agency’s legal responsibility to uphold state law, according to one of the park’s leading environmental groups.

Protect the Adirondacks!, which has consistently opposed the ACR application for fiscal as well as environmental reasons, calls the APA decision a serious mistake that will have far-reaching negative consequences for the people and communities of the Tupper Lake region in particular and the entire Adirondack Park in general.

Moreover, approval of the project represents surrender by the Agency to economic interests and an abandonment of its core mission to ensure that all applications it approves are compliant with the APA Act and other provisions of state law. In an op-ed commentary published Wednesday, Jan. 18, in the Albany Times Union, Protect urged the APA to deny the application because the ACR application does not comply with the law.

“The choice the APA has is a stark one: Either follow the law and deny the application or ignore the law and approve it,” wrote Protect board members Robert Glennon (former Executive Director of the APA) and Robert Harrison (please see full text attached).

It was clear from the APA meeting held Wednesday, Jan. 18, that the Agency was turning its back on its primary responsibility to protect the environment, as only three commissioners expressed significant concerns about the larger issues related to the project’s undue adverse effects—namely, the lack of wildlife studies and the shaky financial underpinnings of the project.

It is also now clear that the process by which the APA reached its decision has been unduly influenced by enormous pressure from several quarters to do something to try to revive the local economy. But as Harrison and colleagues on the Protect board see it, what proponents have settled on is a project so huge in its scope and so reckless in the way it has been planned and financed that it is bound to fail economically while, at the same time, still posing the greatest ecological threat to the Adirondack Park since the APA’s creation.

“The APA staff and board have issued a ruling which is a slap in the face of all previous boards who, by and large, have made the hard decisions to enforce the law and protect our Park,” said Harrison, one of the group’s three Co-Chairs. “This board, influenced by a misguided presentation by the APA Executive Staff, has torn apart the very foundation of the Adirondack Park Agency Act. It is truly a very sad day.”

The decision also demonstrates that the Cuomo Administration has not given the APA the attention and support it sorely needs and deserves. “The Agency is in decline,” said Protect Co-Chair Chuck Clusen. “This and past administrations have passed up opportunities to make strong appointments. Given today’s decision from the APA, it is obvious that the administration’s direction is completely inadequate to meet the standard of what is needed to preserve the Adirondack Park in the present and future. Given that the Governor loves to vacation in the Adirondacks, this decision is most shocking and sad.”

Board member and attorney John Caffry, Co-Chair of the Protect’s Conservation Advocacy Committee, who represented the group during the APA’s adjudicatory hearing, offered this analysis: “With this vote, it is now clear that the Park’s anti-environment/pro-development forces have achieved their long-term goal of capturing control of the Park Agency. It will be open season on subdividing the Park’s backcountry lands, now that we have seen that the APA will approve these projects with only the flimsiest of premises as justification, and with total disregard for the record and the law.”

No Amount of Conditions Can Justify Approval
Protect has opposed any approval of the application, regardless of the conditions attached to the permit, and favored sending the project back to the drawing board, arguing that a smaller, more compact, better designed project could potentially be approvable under the APA Act. In the group’s view, the current application is so far from being compliant with the law, that allowing this project to now move forward and begin, for example, developing precious Resource Management area land before these attached conditions are met demonstrates that the Agency got things backwards this time. The wildlife studies and other such items covered by the permit conditions should have been required before approval.

As Protect board member Sid Harring said after reviewing the draft permit, “Am I the only one who is completely amazed at how little the APA was influenced by anything environmental?”

In addition to the irresponsible approach to the environment that this permit now allows, there remains the dubious financing of the project. The lead developers on the project, Michael Foxman and Tom Lawson, have proposed raising funding for all of the project’s infrastructure via the sale of $35 million worth of low-interest bonds issued by the Franklin County Industrial Development Agency (IDA), as detailed in an article in the January/February 2012 Adirondack Explorer. The bonds would be repaid through payments in lieu of taxes (PILOTs), a scheme that would be passed on to the private property owners who purchase a house or condo in the project.

The owners’ PILOTs would cover the developers’ debt service, while significantly lowering their costs, and shifting the risk to homeowners and the community.The scheme has been rejected by the Franklin County IDA as being unprecedented, and it remains to be seen if the IDA will find the arrangement to be workable or even legal.

Case Record Demonstrates Repeated Failure by Applicant to Prove Its Claims
The financing proposal was just one of many problems with the project that Protect highlighted in building a comprehensive case record throughout the APA’s adjudicatory hearing process. On a dozen separate issues in which the burden of proof was on the applicant, the Protect legal team demonstrated that the applicant failed to provide credible proof for its claims.

Ultimately, the Protect case demonstrated that the ACR project is doomed to failure, based on fictitious real estate projections, inflated revenue estimates, overstated subsidies for the Big Tupper Ski Area, and other faulty numbers. Protect has projected a scenario in which the developer is likely to sell off as many lots as it can, beginning with the eight larger Great Camp lots, sale of which will be used to pay off back taxes and other debts of the developer.

Thousands of acres of timber land will then go out of production. Thousands of acres of wildlife habitat will be irreparably fragmented. Hunting and other recreational opportunities for local residents on those lands will be lost. If the Franklin County IDA does not approve the funding for the remaining infrastructure, there will be no monies available for the planned improvements. It will then be very likely that the developer will abandon the project, resulting in negative fiscal impacts for the Town of Tupper Lake and neighboring communities, and undue adverse impacts to the natural resources of that region of the Adirondack Park.

“There are no winners here today, but there are many, many losers,” said Protect board member Glennon. “The developer didn’t win, for the project will collapse under its own weight. Local government and local residents didn’t win, for they will be saddled with costs as a result. Wildlife didn’t win because, despite asking four times for a site-specific survey, the Agency did not insist on it, and now defends its lack.

“The Agency is one of the biggest losers, having once again sold its birthright for a mess of pottage, completely and deliberately ignoring what its organic act provides with respect to Resource Management lands, the lands most critical to preserving the unique character of the Park, seeking as always to ingratiate, not to regulate.

“The Governor is a loser, for he has lost the trust of those who know he enjoys visiting the Adirondacks, and who expected his appointees and State agency designees to the Agency to protect this precious largest natural area east of the Mississippi.

“But far and away the biggest losers are the Adirondack Park and the 19 million citizens of the State who treasure it. As a consultant to the 1968 Temporary Study Commission on the Future of the Adirondacks wrote at the time, ‘Perhaps a degraded wilderness is all we’re entitled to.’”

About Protect
Protect the Adirondacks! Inc., is a non-profit, grassroots membership organization dedicated to the protection and stewardship of the public and private lands of the Adirondack Park and to building the health and diversity of its human communities and economies for the benefit of current and future generations. For more information, please visit www.protectadks.org.

The decision expected this week by the Adirondack Park Agency on the huge Adirondack Club and Resort project in Tupper Lake would appear to be a choice between spurring economic growth and protecting the environment. That is not the choice.

The project does not comply with state law. The choice the APA has is a stark one: either follow the law and deny the application or ignore the law and approve it.

This project represents the greatest threat to the ecological integrity of the Adirondack Park since the APA’s inception. It is massive — sprawling across 6,235 acres, 4,805 of them in resource management areas, the category of private land subject to the greatest protections under the APA Act. The plans call for 206 single-family dwellings, 453 dwelling units in duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes; a 60-room inn, base lodge, clubhouse, and equestrian center; reconstruction of an existing marina; roads, power lines and its own sewage plant.

The project will fragment 2,781 acres of productive forestland and wildlife habitat into 8 lots ranging from 111 to 770 acres in size and another 837 acres into 31 lots averaging 27 acres. Yet, no on-site, four-season wildlife studies have been done, although the APA formally asked not less than four times that they be prepared and provided.

In addition, there has been no meaningful consideration of alternative project designs — also requested by the APA.

The resort project would violate several sections of the APA Act, the Environmental Conservation Law, DEC regulations, and Article 14, Section 1 of the state Constitution — the provision that requires the Adirondack Forest preserve to remain “forever wild.”

Regardless of whether the project might create hundreds of jobs or generate a tax windfall for local governments — which, on both counts, the record proves it won’t — and regardless of whatever political or public support may exist for it, approving this application would be voided by the courts as “arbitrary and capricious” and not supported by “substantial evidence” as the law requires. The application, therefore, must be denied.

The law in these cases also places the burden of proof on the applicant to prove the claims of its application. Yet, the applicant failed to prove its case on each of a dozen different issues aired during the hearings. To cite just a few of the failings:

Lack of credible evidence to support the marketing plan: testimony from expert witnesses showed that the applicant’s claims have no basis in reality.

Lack of a financing plan: the proposed bonding scheme using PILOTS—payments in lieu of taxes—was made up by the applicant and has no basis in law or regulations.

Inflated revenue estimates and overstated subsidies for the Big Tupper Ski Area, the supposed centerpiece of the project. In fact, the ski area will lose money and the applicant’s plan makes it likely Big Tupper won’t be retained as a community resource.

The courts have held that the APA Act places environmental concerns first and that the agency is not charged with a balancing of social/economic goals and the protection of the environment. Rather, it is legislatively mandated to ensure that certain projects within its jurisdiction would not have “an undue adverse impact upon the natural, scenic, aesthetic, ecological, wildlife, historic, recreational or open space resources of the park.” The record proves that won’t be the case.

The only real choice open to the APA is to follow the law and deny the application.

By CHARLES C. MORRISON

Protect the Adirondacks! is as happy as everyone else about the success of the Saratoga and North Creek Railway between Saratoga Springs and North Creek. We wish SNCR well there. SNCR’s proposal to extend its operations to Tahawus is another story. Nearly half of the 30-mile right-of-way for the Tahawus spur lies on the State Forest Preserve, which belongs to all of the people of New York State. Protect’s first obligation as an Adirondack conservation organization is to defend Article 14 of the State constitution, the “forever wild” provision for the State Forest Preserve

In 1941 the federal government wantonly violated Article 14 and private landowners when it took easements for the right-of-way by eminent domain to haul ilmenite (titanium) ore, a strategic mineral during the wartime emergency, from Tahawus. (Ore of much better quality lies in overseas sources but German subs were of concern during the war.) The State of New York and Protect’s predecessor organization, the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court about the violation and tried to have the Preserve returned at the end of the war. In the end, the easements on the Preserve were made temporary, for a 15-year term, on the grounds that the federal agency had to amortize its $3.0 million cost for construction of the railroad. The easements on the private land were permanent from the beginning. The railroad, upon completion in 1941, was immediately leased to National Lead. When the war emergency was over, the ore was hauled by National Lead strictly for commercial profit-making purposes.

In 1962 the federal agency in charge tried to surplus the easements and rails to National Lead. The State objected but did not go to court. The federal agency, quite arbitrarily, extended the easements for 100 years, for the same purposes as the original easements. National Lead stopped mining and hauling ilmenite ore in 1982, abandoned the rail spur in 1989, tried to sell its entire 11,400 acre property to the State throughout the 1990s but couldn’t get certification that it was free of hazardous waste, finally sold 10,000 acres in 2003 including the ilmenite reserves at Cheney Pond, then applied to APA in 2005 to salvage the rails for scrap from Barton Mines northward with the idea of selling the “stolen” rail-free easements on the Preserve to the State for a trail. After six months this application was withdrawn for various reasons and in 2006 NL Industries demolished its mill buildings at Tahawus and cleaned up the site.

Protect believes that the easements on the private land and the Preserve (a) never could be used to haul anything but ilmenite ore and (b) they have reverted, as a result of disuse and abandonment for this purpose, to the owners of the fee title interest in the land.

SNCR told the federal Surface Transportation Board nothing about this controversy in its October 25th notice to the Board stating that they were exempt from filing a detailed application to become a common carrier. They presented the exemption notice as a routine non- controversial matter but, as they knew, it isn’t. Protect simply presented the above facts to the Board. Because there obviously is a controversy and a detailed application is required, the Board rejected SNCR’s exemption notice and on December 5 SNCR appealed. That’s where the matter lies.

CHARLES C. MORRISON, Board Member, Protect the Adirondacks!

A couple who lived for 30 years near Schroon Lake, NY, have left a generous bequest to the environmental group Protect the Adirondacks! to further their lifetime wish for preservation of wild places in the Adirondacks. Bob and Marie Snyder were deeply appreciative of the natural world in all its beauty and infinite variety. They lived very lightly on the earth, using no electricity or fossil fuels for daily life in their forest home.

After leaving a home on an Adirondack lake because of ever-increasing development as well as noise and other disturbances from recreational vehicles, the Snyders built a very efficient log home from the trees and rocks on their new land with nothing but hand tools. Using pick, shovel, and wheelbarrow, they built a pond for wildlife, and a garden with greenhouse that could be tempered by an underground wood stove. As they were vegetarians, they were able to grow most of their food, using only organic methods.

They loved the peace and quiet of living a half mile by trail from their bicycles and seldom-used car. However, when in 1990 the Residents’ Committee to Protect the Adirondacks (RCPA) held a series of open meetings to present the group’s reasons for supporting the recommendations of a citizen’s task force about the future of the Adirondacks, Bob and Marie participated in the often tense discussions. Throughout the next two decades they supported RCPA and its merged form with the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks– Protect the Adirondacks– in their work to keep development in the Park as low impact as possible, and the “forever wild” forest preserve as wild as possible.

PROTECT is grateful for the bequest made possible because the Snyders enjoyed their natural surroundings so much that they had no need to spend money on anything but the barest necessities. They wanted the resulting life savings to be used to help keep their beloved Adirondacks as wild and unspoiled as possible and trusted Protect the Adirondacks to do this after they were gone.