Adirondack Park Agency
Fails to Live Up to its Values and Regulations:
Ignores Public’s Call for a Hearing on 3.5 Mile Long Shoreline Development
On Friday, June 9 the Adirondack Park Agency considered written requests by 26 individuals and organizations to hold a public hearing on an application to subdivide 3.5 miles of shoreline of remote Woodhull Lake into 27 new house lots. This shoreline lies within the most protected private land classification in the Adirondacks
On Friday, June 9 the APA issued the applicant a permit to subdivide and develop without a public hearing. Association Director of Park Protection Dan Plumley read the following statement after that decision. Read the Association's detailed letter on this subdivision application here.
Statement of Daniel R. Plumley
Director of Park Protection
Before the Adirondack Park Agency
June 9, 2006
I am Dan Plumley, Director of Park Protection of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks. I have three matters to discuss with you briefly today and I do appreciate this opportunity to comment.
1. I must speak at some length regarding your decisions today regarding the Adirondack League Club Project. First, we all recognize the long history of the Adirondack League Club and their history of sound land stewardship. There has never been any dispute about that, but this project has raised significant concerns for good reason and not only by environmental organizations, as your staff director Mark Sengenberger purported in his presentation. Mark was incorrect, as this was not simply the case of environmental groups expressing last minute concerns about a project. Our requests were made and repeated for months and have been joined by over 41 comments letters and faxes, thoughtfully written by dozens of locals, seasonal landowners and old timers around Woodhull Lake and the region who – like us – sought to be heard on the important aspects of this project. Today you denied them that opportunity by failing to bring this significant project to public hearing.
The Adirondack Park Agency promotes in your own mission and values statement that the Agency values public understanding and support of our mission. The Agency states that it believes in the need to protect the resources of the park. The Agency values serving the public consistently, honestly and fairly. The Agency values proactive and ongoing dialogue with the individuals and organizations having a stake in your actions. And the Agency values embracing learning by obtaining, exchanging and utilizing the best available knowledge and experience. Today, regrettably, you did not live up to those values.
Moreover beyond your values statement, your regulations are clear in their direction to you on the premise for holding a public hearing.
The Agency may go to public hearing for a project whose size, complexity and uniqueness of resources warrants it. Surely a 30 lot, 1,235 acre subdivision in resource management spreading development across 3.5 miles of pristine shoreline, wetlands and recognized critical environmental areas under your Act meets this test. And yet you failed to act.
The Agency chose not to go to public hearing and gave no opportunity to consider more sustainable alternatives. Yes, we recognize, as Mark Sengenberger stated, that residential development is an accepted use on resource management lands. He suggested that the conservation organizations suggested otherwise, but that has never been the case. But to the point, residential development is a recognized in the act as a secondary use on resource management, whereas protecting the wild, open space character and most vulnerable resources as with pristine shoreline is the primary use. The most essential use. The use you are supposed to strive towards. The very primary use the public sought to be heard on, but you denied them that opportunity and instead you allowed the applicant to concentrate much of its development intensity from across 1,235 acres and apply it intensively to the most vulnerable resource in the park: 3.5 miles of undeveloped shoreline, in what your staff dangerously and I believe wrongly termed a clustered development – a 3.5 mile cluster.
Your regulations state that you may go to public hearing based on the degree of public interest. Since last year (not just yesterday, as was suggested) dozens of citizens from the Woodhull Lake region, landowners, even many League Club members themselves along with 3 conservation organizations representing some 26,000 citizen members asked you to convene a public hearing. By approving this permit without a public hearing.
you failed to recognize their legitimate interests.
Your regulations further state that the Agency may go to hearing if there is a good possibility that the information offered by the public and stakeholders – groups like ours and the people of Woodhull Lake - could be of assistance to the Agency in making its determinations on a major project. By turning a hearing down, you chose not to want their assistance.
In effect, you failed the public by bypassing a public hearing and that, as much as the environmental design and potential impacts of this important project, is a very large failure and a significant disappointment.
2. Second, I wish to commend the Adirondack Park Agency, the Department of Transportation and the Department of Environmental Conservation, and in large part Stu Buchanan for the hard work on the Consent Order over the violations last fall of the Forest Preserve along Route 3. It was early September of last year that we filed our violation report and there were many months of work by many in state government and the Association and public as well in this matter. It has produced significant results under the circumstances from direct actions to implement quite well the clean up along route 3 to direct aid projects supporting both communities from Tupper to Saranac Lake that are positive. The Consent Order is significant, even historical in a sense, in that it calls for several specific actions to be undertaken that can improve state inter-agency collaboration – something that does not always work well or cohesively – on the management and protection of the park's scenic roadway corridors.
We remind the Agency that the actions contained in the Consent Order call for specific timelines and direct public, stakeholder involvement that we the Association deem important. We have asked formally to be apprised of the opportunities to participate and we look forward to aiding in the effective implementation on this important Consent Order.
3. Finally, with high gasoline and energy prices so much in the news, and with the recognition locally and globally of the impacts of climate change and the need to prepare ourselves with the inevitability of the end of the oil, the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks has produced a report entitled "Power for the Park," by Mike DiNunzio. You may access that report on our website at www.protectadks.org and I note specifically the call in that report for this Agency in particular to consider means by which you can in your work with applicants, and in your permitting procedures, help to foster much needed energy conservation measures that are critically needed. Mike first presented the report at the recent Adirondack Research Consortium conference which was attended by some of your staff.
Thank you for permitting me to offer comment.
Daniel R. Plumley
Director of Park Protection
The Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks
Keene, NY
The Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks
897 St. David's Lane
Niskayuna, NY 12309