The Lake George Park Commission earlier this month suspended a pair of herbicide permit applications pending with state officials.
Dave Wick, executive director of the lake state agency charged with management of Lake George, said after state lawyers appealed a Warren County judge’s decision blocking a permit that would have allowed the herbicide to be used last year, he asked that applications seeking permission to use the herbicide this year be put on hold.
APA failure to hold public hearings has consequences
Last April, Adirondack organizations wrote to the Adirondack Park Agency asking APA to rediscover their discretionary power to hold adjudicatory public hearings on particularly complex, controversial Adirondack land use projects. No response to our joint letter has been forthcoming from the APA. However, a rather resounding response has just come from a member of our state’s judicial branch.
Only one formal APA adjudicatory public hearing has been held in recent memory, and that was in 2011 and concerned the Adirondack Club and Resort in Tupper Lake. Ever since, APA staff have refused to recommend that the board take any land use and development to public hearing. And no APA board has produced the required six votes to do so.
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