Snowmobile guidelines OK’d

The Adirondack Park Agency voted 10-1 Friday to approve snowmobile-trail guidelines despite objections by environmental groups that they violate the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan.

The executive directors of the Adirondack Council, Adirondack Mountain Club, and Protect the Adirondacks say the guidelines would permit trails that fail to meet the master plan’s mandate that snowmobile trails have “essentially the same character as a foot trail.” They also say the guidelines would unlawfully permit the use of grooming machines on the Forest Preserve.

On Thursday, all three said they would consider suing the APA if the guidelines were approved. After Friday’s vote, Brian Houseal of the Adirondack Council said his preference would be to work with the APA to amend the State Land Master Plan after the fact.

Houseal and his two colleagues said they would not object to the guidelines if the master plan were amended.

After the meeting, APA Chairman Curt Stiles said he was not bothered by the prospect of court action.  “I don’t worry about lawsuits,” he said. “If we made a flawed decision, then we should be challenged. Everything the Park Agency decides is potentially subject to a challenge by somebody.”

Commissioner Dick Booth, the lone dissenter, urged the board not to adopt the guidelines without amending the master plan.

About-face on Lows Lake

The changes shown on the map were approved Friday with the exception of the classification of the surface waters and beds of Lows Lake and Bog Lake. Courtesy of Adirondack Park Agency.

In a victory for local government, the Adirondack Park Agency voted 7-4 Friday to renege on an earlier decision to give a land-use classification to the waters and bed of Lows Lake.

The APA board did the about-face while redoing a vote taken in September. At the earlier meeting, the commissioners voted 6-4 to classify the waters, bed, and surrounding lands of the lake either Wilderness or Primitive. Because of a legal snafu, that vote was later deemed invalid, and so the board took up the matter again at this week’s meeting.

In the original decision, the board agreed to classify about 9,620 acres of land Wilderness and another 290 acres Primitive. In addition, Lows Lake itself would have been split into two zones: 1,960 acres Wilderness and 640 acres Primitive. The 200 acres of neighboring Bog Lake also would have been classified as Wilderness.

Fred Monroe of the Local Government Review Board, a nonvoting member of the APA board, strongly objected to classifying the bed and waters of the lake, saying it would set a bad precedent. Although Lows Lake is mostly surrounded by state land, there are private lands on the lake. Monroe feared the decision would extend APA jurisdiction to other lakes with private land.

At Friday’s meeting, APA Commissioner Bill Thomas, a former Johnsburg supervisor, proposed amending the resolution to leave the lake unclassified. Betsy Lowe, who represents the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), was among those who supported the amendment. So did the designees from the departments of state and economic development, the other two state agencies with seats on the board. Without their three votes, the amendment would not have passed.

Afterward, Dan Plumley of Protect the Adirondacks denounced the vote. “The retreat by the three state agencies—especially the Department of Environmental Conservation—is shameful,” he said.

He and Neil Woodworth, executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club, contend that since the lakebed is part of the Forest Preserve, the APA is obligated by law to classify it. “It’s certainly a possibility that we will challenge the decision in the courts,” Woodworth said.

But Brian Houseal of the Adirondack Council, another environmental group, said he supported the decision to leave Lows Lake unclassified. He argues that dividing a lake into two zones goes against common sense. “How would you know when you cross from Wilderness surface waters to Primitive surface waters?” he asked.

Houseal thinks the APA needs to develop a separate classification scheme for waters, analogous to the one it uses for Forest Preserve lands.

Both the Wilderness and Primitive classifications would prohibit the use of floatplanes and motorboats. The less-strict Primitive classification allows for manmade facilities such as the Lows Lake dams and roads. 

DEC has already banned the public use of motorboats on Lows Lake and is phasing out the use of floatplanes. Thus, Monroe argued that it was unnecessary to classify the lake.

Woodworth, however, worries that the decision will set a precedent that enables the state to avoid classifying other lakes in the future. He said he would have been satisfied if all of Lows Lake had been classified Primitive.

Besides the state designees, the commissioners who voted for the Thomas amendment were Frank Mezzano, Art Lussi, Lani Ulrich, and of course Thomas himself  (all four are residents of the Park). The commissoners opposing the amendment were APA Chairman Curt Stiles, Dick Booth, James Townsend, and Cecil Wray. All but Stiles live outside the Park.