Association's comments to the Adirondack
Park Agency on APA conceptual review of the "Preserve" on Tupper Lake
Trustees, Advisors, Special Friends,
Attached please find the Association's comments to the Adirondack Park Agency on APA conceptual review of the "Preserve" on Tupper Lake (PDF 72KB).
Deadline for comments is Jan. 8, 2005. The project is on the Agency's Jan. 13-14, 2005 agenda in Ray Brook.
I encourage as many of us as possible and as many of our Trustees and members to write the Agency (Chairman Ross Whaley, Adirondack Park Agency, P.O. Box 99, Ray Brook, NY 12977) and the Governor (Governor George Pataki, Executive Chamber, State Capitol, Albany, NY 12224) with concerns about the project concept as proposed and objecting to an artificial deadline of January for the Agency to provide "conceptual guidance" to the developer.
Please draw on anything in our official submission for your own letter or note of concern to the Agency, in your own words. Actually, your referring to our official submission is helpful because it forces Agency commissioners to refer to and re-read our letter.
There is pressure on the Agency to permit conceptual review to proceed immediately. There is nothing in the Agency regulations to require this, however. The first the public learned anything about this proposal was in December 2004 in Tupper Lake.
The more time that goes into a credibly based APA decision to grant or not to grant such conceptual review, the more
- time and freedom Agency staffwill have to request more detailed site information from the developer; conduct site visits; prepare a case re. the many "resource constraints" the concept presents in relation to criteria in the APA Law, and to present alternative designs
- time we all have in summarizing the most outrageous aspects of this concept (fragmentation of Resource Management lands being on the top of the list).
- time for local concerns in Tupper Lake to be heard and for unsavory facts to continue to come out about the developer's history and background (see headlines in Tuesday's Adirondack Daily Enterprise)
My "fact sheet" on the project follows:
- redevelopment of Big Tupper Ski Area, largely a good idea for the community but one financially based on the construction and sale of townhouses through charging each townhouse owner many hundreds of dollars of fees to support the skiing operation on Mt. Morris, now undeveloped except for defunct infrastructure of Big Tupper Ski area. There is a serious question whether or not the this future Ski Center will be generally open to the public.
- subdivision of 4,300 acres into sites and lots for 826 new condo units, dwellings, single family units and so-called "great camps." The residential units are "clustered" in 16 separate areas at the base and on different flanks of Mt. Morris. In order to achieve "ski in, ski out" capability, housing units are proposed high up on the mountain (above 1500 feet) on slopes averaging as high as or even exceeding 25 percent. Upslope development includes homes, roads, sewers, water lines, lighting for homes and nighttime skiing. Soil erosion at these heights and slopes is inevitable.
- subdivision and development is proposed on 1200 acres of lands zoned Moderate Intensity Use (near the defunct ski center) and on over 4000 acres of lands zoned Resource Management to the north and east of the mountain.
- 25 so-called "great camp lots" where 25 large homes are proposed on 80 acres each to be spread around 2,700 acres of heavily forested and unroaded Resource Management (RM) lands. 1500 acres in RM are proposed as "dedicated open space." However, the entire 4,700 acres in RM would be affected by roads and infrastructure leading to the 25 great camps, ancillary buildings attached to these "camps" and so on. This is truly fragmentation in the worst sense. No conservation easement is proposed for the RM lands. Resource Management is described in the APA law as "those lands where the need to protect, manage and enhance forest, agricultural, recreational and open space resources is of paramount importance because of overriding natural resources and public considerations."
- substantial extensions of electric power, water and sewer affecting the village and town of Tupper Lake. The developer proposes that the municipality annex most of the project development site for these services. New power sources will be needed and are proposed to met by a new powerline and distribution to Tupper and L. Placid the Governor has announced to come down from St. Lawrence hydro to the northwest. Energy conservation measures associated with this new line in both Tupper Lake and Lake Placid are urgently needed.
- many wetland and water quality issues associated with development proposed near Tupper Lake and Lake Simond (please see our letter for details).
- there are many financial questions about the financing and short and longer-term financial responsibilities and capacities for completing this project.
Thanks,
Dave Gibson, Executive Director