Groups Sue To Protect SLMP, Wilderness Water Routes
The Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK) and Protect the Adirondacks! (PROTECT), filed a lawsuit Tuesday in state Supreme Court in Albany to force the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) to classify the state-owned Lows Lake-Bog River-Oswegatchie wilderness canoe route in the heart of the Adirondacks. The move comes on the heels of Governor David Paterson's signing off on the classification and reclassification of about 8,000 acres (the Lows Lake Primitive Area, a portion of the Hitchins Pond Primitive Area, and additional acres south of Lows Lake) to wilderness their addition to the Five Ponds and Round Lake wilderness areas and also creating a new Eastern Five Ponds Access Primitive Area.
Adirondack organizations had sought to have the water and lakebed of Lows Lake designated wilderness and succeeded in persuading the APA of as much in time for a September vote in their favor. In November, the Empire State Development Corporation, argued that they had not authorized their representative on the APA and were granted a re-vote. During that second vote, three Paterson administrative representatives reversed their votes. Protect! and the Adirondack Mountain Club claim that second vote went against the State Land Master Plan (SLMP).
“We are forced to seek redress in the courts because, despite the best efforts of many different parties, our state agencies failed to settle some important matters regarding implementation of the State Land Master Plan,” said David Gibson, executive director of PROTECT, “We go to court for all state-owned waters in the Forest Preserve, not merely to settle the classification of Lows Lake. Classification drives management direction. We seek better direction about how to manage wild waters in the Forest Preserve for the benefit of people in the central Adirondacks, visitors from all across the country and Canada and many more who may never paddle these waters, but who nonetheless appreciate the way they are managed for future generations.”
According to the Adirondack groups, the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan, which is part of state Executive Law, requires the APA to classify all state-owned lands and waters in the Adirondack Park according to “their characteristics and ability to withstand use.”
Neil Woodworth, ADK’s executive director, said in a press release that “The state bought Lows Lake a quarter century ago with the express intent of establishing a wilderness canoe route. Both APA and DEC have acknowledged that the waters and bed of Lows Lake are part of the Forest Preserve. Under the law, the waters and bed of a lake that is wholly owned by the state as part of the Forest Preserve must be classified.”
The lawsuit also names DEC, one of the three state agencies with a seat on the APA board, because according to a press release "DEC violated a stipulation in the settlement of a 2008 lawsuit when it supported the proposal to remove Lows Lake from the classification resolution." ADK, the Sierra Club and the groups that now make up PROTECT sued DEC over its failure to abide by a legal commitment to ban floatplanes on Lows Lake by January 2008. The conservation groups dropped the suit after DEC requested that APA initiate the process to classify the bed and water of Lows Lake as Wilderness.
A pdf version of the petition is available here.
4 Comments:
Now this strikes me as a frivolous lawsuit, and I'm firmly in the "quiet waters" camp. I don't see how a man-made reservoir with a number of private inholdings on which motorized use would be allowed can be classified as Wilderness. What's wrong with sharing such a body of water? And besides, the whole "wilderness" concept- as in minimal human presence or impact - is often a fiction. Look at Lake Lila - that place is a human zoo on most summer weekends, despite the fact that it is classified as Wilderness (or perhaps because it is, yet is so easily accessible by car).
I think the idea for Lows Lake is the larger, longer canoe route. 45 miles or so, I believe.
Paddlers, can you help us understand this in context of other available routes and the relative importance of this one?
As far as wilderness being "often fiction" - that doesn't matter to me. We need to have large areas where wilderness (such as it is) survives. It's not a lot to ask for small (and that's what the entire Adirondack Park is in reality - small) areas are set aside for wildlife and primitive camping, hiking, skiing, paddling, (and at the periphery and properly designed and maintained, even snowmobiling, ATVing, four-wheeling, motor boating, and car and RV camping).
My concern is about the potential blowback from other interest groups such as private landowners and motorized access groups as some of these environmental groups keep on picking these ideological battles that will have questionable practical benefit. We (as in people who would like to see as much land as possible preserved and classified as Wilderness) have gained a heck of a lot in the past decade or so - let's not get too greedy and inspire the wrath of people who see this as a negative development. It's going to be a disaster for the Adirondacks if motorized access groups and private landowners get equally confrontational and litigious and start pushing for things on the basis of ideology, rather than practical need. Jim McCulley and Sandy Lewis could just be the tip of the iceberg if some of these environmental groups aren't careful.
It's interesting that these same groups that are suing NYS now are the ones that sued the Adirondack League Club and fought for the Moose River to be opened to the public since it was a navigable water (public highway) even though the shores and bed of the river were privately owned and unencumbered by any written easement.
It would be interesting to shh how they would respond to the motorized boaters and float plane operators, fighting for access since the Bog River is also a navigable water/public highway. You can't have it both ways people...
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