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Back in June something occurred with potentially great significance for the Adirondack Park that flew below the proverbial radar. That month, a letter was mailed from the U.S. Army at Ft. Drum to selected agencies notifying them that “Fort Drum is initiating agency coordination for a new proposed action within the existing nine county Local Flying Area surrounding Fort Drum’s Installation Restricted Airspace area.”
That nine county Local Flying Area includes large portions of the Adirondack Park.
Interestingly, the Army’s letter and lengthy environmental assessment document never mentions the existence or the significance of the Adirondack Park, or of the Forest Preserve, or of state constitutional protection under Article 14.
I appreciate the Adirondack Council’s 
Even during the summer’s pandemic, development submittals to the Adirondack Park Agency have not slowed very much. Case in point: the proposed developer of Woodward Lake in Fulton County has submitted additional information to the Adirondack Park Agency this month (of July). APA has issued multiple requests for additional information since the applicant, New York Land and Lakes LLC, Oneonta, NY, first submitted an application in 2018 to subdivide an undeveloped 1,100-acre lake and forest near Northville into 37 second home lots, driveways and onsite septic. There is no public water or sewer here and the applicant proposes none.
The protection and planning for the Adirondack Park’s six million acres, one-fifth of the state, rests in large measure on the motivation and independence of the Adirondack Park Agency’s staff and board members in Ray Brook. Seven members were just nominated by Governor Cuomo and confirmed to sit at the APA’s table by the State Senate. How should we think about them? How should we think about them in light of Governor Cuomo’s challenge to reimagine and improve public policies and practices – to “build back better”?
George Davis is a visionary and practiced land use planner and ecologist. In the early years of the Adirondack Park Agency, George helped to conceive, draft, and implement the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan and the park’s Private Land Use and Development Plan.
Marking 50 years of Earth Day (1970-2020) should not pass without paying tribute to the late New York State Senator Bernard C. Smith. The late State Senator and chair of the Senate’s environmental conservation committee combined a strong moral and ethical compass with political talent and negotiating skill to protect and conserve our state’s wild lands, wild rivers and natural resources from 1965-1978. He was a steadfast and very influential Republican proponent for the environment precisely when such a Republican was needed in Albany. He worked his political skills at the State Capitol, but his love for fishing and the outdoors was expressed at his home on Long Island and in the streams and rivers of the Catskills, where he had a camp near the Esopus Creek, and on the upper Hudson River in the Adirondacks.
How has the Adirondack Park Agency fared under Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2020 executive budget proposals? The question hasn’t received any media attention for obvious reasons. It’s a mini state agency, budget-wise.
New York State’s expedient evasion of its own State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQR), has no better recent example than the 
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