DEC plans to remove two fire towers

Hurricane Mountain fire tower. Photo by Phil Brown.

In a controversial decision, the state Department of Environmental Conservation is recommending the removal of old fire towers on St. Regis Mountain and Hurricane Mountain.

Environmental groups have argued that the towers should be removed because they are in areas that are managed, by and large, as Wilderness. The guidelines for managing Wilderness Areas require the removal of most man-made structures. Also, environmentalists point out that both summits offer wide-open views without the towers.

Nevertheless, many local residents (and no doubt many visitors as well) want the towers to remain. They see the structures as reminders of the region’s history.

Environmentalists have split over the removal of a fire tower on Wakely Mountain, which has virtually no view otherwise. DEC recommends keeping this tower and the observer’s cabin. It would be used as a radio-repeater station.

DEC will hold a public meeting on the Hurricane tower at Keene Central School on Thursday, Feb. 25, at 6:30 p.m. A public meeting on the St. Regis tower will be held at the Freer Science Building at Paul Smith’s College on the same night, starting at the same time.

More information about the fire-tower study is available here.

Click below to read DEC’s news release (PDF file).

DEC on fire towers PDF

Revisiting Crane Pond Road

The words "Adirondack Homeland" appear on a boulder at the entrance to the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness, a reminder of the battle over Crane Pond Road two decades ago.

In the next issue of the Adirondack Explorer, we plan to publish an article by Adam Federman on the implications of the Old Mountain Road decision on the state Forest Preserve.

Federman notes that probably hundreds of old roads crisscross the Preserve. As a result of the Old Mountain Road case, observers are asking whether towns could reopen these roads to snowmobiles and/or other motor vehicles.

Any attempt to open these roads is sure to put the state Department of Environmental Conservation in the crossfire between local governments and environmental groups.

Remember Crane Pond Road? The dirt lane penetrates nearly two miles into the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness, ending at Crane Pond. Since motorized use is forbidden in Wilderness Areas, DEC placed boulders across the road in 1989 to blockade it.

The closure enraged local residents and became a cause celebre. In 1990, a group of men wearing masks removed the boulders and vowed to keep the road open. Members of Earth First, a radical environmental group, later pitched tents at the start of road to keep out vehicles.

A truck at the Crane Pond, nearly two miles inside the Pharaoh Lake Wilderness. Photo by Phil Brown.

This set up a confrontation between the Earth Firsters and locals who wanted to keep the road open. Jack LaDuke, who was there as a reporter for WCAX-TV, recalls that Warrensburg Supervisor Maynard Baker was among those who approached the encampment.

“Out of the corner of my eye I saw some commotion,” LaDuke told me today. “Baker and this other fellow were going at it. It was a very short encounter. Baker threw a punch and hit the fellow, it appeared to me on the chin, and he went down.” The Earth Firsters left soon afterward.

LaDuke’s footage later aired on a 60 Minutes piece about violence against environmentalists.

I went to Crane Pond Road on a gray, chilly day a few weeks ago to take photographs for Federman’s story. There is still an American flag hanging from a tree near the boundary of the Wilderness Area. Just where the road crosses into state land I noticed a boulder with spray-painted letters. I scraped off the moss and to reveal what they said: “Adirondack Homeland.”

There were no signs either indicating that this was the boundary of a Wilderness Area or forbidding motor vehicles. In fact, I wasn’t sure this was the boundary when I first drove up the road. I went as far as the trailhead for Goose Pond and hiked the rest of the way to Crane Pond. I saw three pickups parked along the road, including one at Crane Pond.

John Sheehan, a spokesman for the Adirondack Council, argues that DEC is obligated by the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan to close the road. “It was closed [initially] by a legal action,” he said. “It was reopened by an act of vandalism.”

But the agency has no desire to open this can of worms.

When I asked why the road remains open, DEC spokesman Yancey Roy sent this e-mailed response: “When the controversy became public some years ago, the administration at the time decided to delay any action on the road until some future date. All subsequent administrations have continued to follow that policy.”

DEC’s vote on Lows Lake

You haven’t heard the last of Lows Lake controversy—at least not from me.

Unfortunately, I missed the discussion that preceded last week’s vote by the Adirondack Park Agency on the proposed classification of the lake. (The APA changed its schedule at the last minute, so I arrived after the vote).

Lows Ridge at the foot of Lows Lake overlooks the Bog River valley. Photo by Phil Brown.

As you may recall from my earlier post, the agency commissioners voted 7-4 to reverse a decision in September to classify the lake as Wilderness or Primitive. The reason the classification proposal failed last week is that the three designees representing state agencies—namely, the departments of environmental conservation, economic development, and state—changed their votes.

Since the Department of Environmental Conservation had been one of the authors of the proposal—and it’s the agency responsible for protecting the Park’s natural resources—I was most curious about its change of heart.

After Friday’s meeting, I called DEC’s regional office for an explanation and was referred to the department’s public-relations staff in Albany. I was told by a spokeswoman in Albany that the department would not comment beyond what DEC’s representative, Betsy Lowe, said at the meeting.

Today I got a chance to listen to Lowe’s explanation as the APA has posted a webcast of the meeting.

But first a little background. The proposal would have designated the eastern third of the lake Primitive and the rest Wilderness. Both classifications prohibit the use of motors. The proposal also called for classifying or reclassifying much of the land around Lows, again either Wilderness or Primitive.

The Local Government Review Board, which monitors the APA, had opposed attaching any land classification to Lows Lake. Most of the land around Lows is in the public Forest Preserve, but there are private holdings along the shore as well. The board argued that classifying Lows would set a precedent that would give the APA jurisdiction over other lakes with private land. The board did not object to classifying the state lands abutting the lake.

At Friday’s meeting, William Thomas, a former Johnsburg supervisor, introduced an amendment to remove the lake classification from the proposal.

APA Chairman Curt Stiles told me later that he had not known that Thomas planned to introduce this amendment. In contrast, it seems likely that Lowe did know that the amendment was coming, because she supported it without hesitation—notwithstanding that it contradicted DEC’s earlier position.

Her first argument in favor of the amendment was that DEC would have a tougher time managing the lake if it were classified Wilderness or Primitive. “The staff would not be able to use small boats to do the administrative work they need to do to take care of the campsites,” she said.

Think about this. DEC has prohibited the public from using motorboats on Lows Lake and will ban floatplanes from the lake after 2011. But it wants its staff to continue to use motorboats on what is supposed to be a wilderness canoe route.

Stiles seized on this point during the APA meeting. “The notion of classifying the water where the underlying bed is owned by the state is appropriate,” he said, “notwithstanding the hardship it may intrude on DEC personnel in terms of having to row instead of taking a motorboat. But when you classify Wilderness, that’s part of the deal, so I don’t consider that to be a legitimate objection.” Nor was this ob jection raised in the many months leading up to Friday’s vote.

In an interview today, Neil Woodworth, executive director of the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK), was a bit harsher in his criticism. “To throw the whole concept of a wilderness canoe route in jeopardy because DEC wants to use motorboats is a real shock,” he said.

Lowe, who is DEC’s regional director, gave another reason for changing her vote: The community was not comfortable with classifying the lake. “It sounds like there’s a concern that the classification of the bed is somehow precedent-setting,” she said.

Woodworth said he has little doubt that the state-agency designees discussed their move before the meeting and intentionally left Stiles out of the loop. “I think it was an organized effort by the three state agencies to sandbag Curt Stiles,” he said. He added: “As far as the three state agencies that flipped their vote, I think they did so in concert, and I think they did so with the blessing of the governor’s office.”

Lowe’s office referred all questions to Albany. I left a bunch of questions with DEC’s spokesman in Albany but have yet to hear back. I’ll give an update if I do.

Some people wonder what it matters if the lake is classified or not. After all, DEC has already adopted regulations to ban powerboats and planes. Woodworth, however, said regulations can be changed without much trouble. “If the water were classified as Wilderness [or Primitive] it would be much harder for any subsequent political administration to reverse the decision to phase out motorboats and floatplanes,” he said.

Since Lows Lake is part of the Forest Preserve, Woodworth contends that the APA is obligated to give it some kind of land classification. He said DEC’s vote on Friday was a betrayal of previous commitments to support classifying the lake. Asked if ADK will sue the APA, he replied, “I think it’s likely at this point. I’m not saying we’re definitely going to do it.”

Incidentally, the APA voted 6-4 back in September to classify the lake. However, the vote of the designee from the Department of Economic Development (DED) was later deemed invalid because he had already left the department for another state job. Since the proposal required six votes to pass, the APA took up the matter again this month.

Commissioner Cecil Wray, who was absent in September due to illness, voted for the measure last week and noted that if he had been present at the first meeting, the proposal would have mustered six votes even without the DED designee’s support. “I’m feeling very apologetic, because I’m the cause of all these problems,” he said. “I apologize that I was not here in September.”

Adirondack Council joins McCulley fight

Jim McCulley takes a stroll on the Old Mountain Road in Keene with Cherokee, his golden Labrador retriever. Photo by Susan Bibeau.

Environmentalists worry that a snowmobiler’s victory in the Old Mountain Road case could lead to the opening of roads throughout the Forest Preserve to motorized use. So worried is the Adirondack Council that it has asked for permission to intervene in the case.

In May, Pete Grannis, the chief of the state Department of Environmental Conservation, dismissed a ticket issued to Jim McCulley, a Lake Placid resident who drove a snowmobile and then a truck on the Old Mountain Road in the Sentinel Range Wilderness. Grannis agreed with McCulley that the old road had never been legally abandoned by the local towns and therefore DEC had no right to ban motorized use. (The decision is attached below.)

John Sheehan, spokesman for the Adirondack Council, said the decision could affect hundreds of miles of old roads in the Forest Preserve. The council has asked permission to join a motion by DEC’s staff to clarify the decision.

“Our entire object is not to go after McCulley but to prevent problems from arising in other parts of the Preserve,” Sheehan said.

Sheehan said the council wants Grannis to overturn his own decision or modify it “to remove some of the erroneous interpretations of the law.” He argues that state law and legal precedents suggest that a road is legally abandoned if it has not been used as a road for a number of years.

The four-mile stretch of the Old Mountain Road in question–which runs from Keene to North Elba–has not been maintained for motorized use for many years (click to see  its history). It is part of the Jackrabbit Ski Trail.

Soon after Grannis issued his decision, DEC’s own staff filed a motion asking for clarification (see attachment below). DEC attorney Randall Young says the staff believes the decision “misapprehended or misapplied” the law and needs to be clarified “to ensure proper care, custody, and control of the lands under the administration of the Department.”

McCulley’s attorney, Matthew Norfolk of Lake Placid, opposes both DEC’s motion and the council’s request to support the motion. In legal papers filed with the agency, Norfolk contends that “DEC staff are simply attempting to reargue points of law that were argued (over and over again) in the administrative proceeding.”

DEC spokesman Yancey Roy said Grannis probably will decide within a month or two whether to consider the request to clarify his ruling. If he does agree to reconsider it, the two sides would be asked to present arguments for and against modifying the decision.

Grannis decision PDF

DEC staff motion PDF

Spring fling

The King Phillip's Spring before the pipe was removed. Photo by Phil Gallos.

Phil Gallos has a thing for springs. He has visited more than sixty of them in the Adirondacks, often taking photographs and recording his observations. In ancient times, he says, springs were sacred places–they sustained life.

“There’s an aesthetic and spiritual quality to going to the spring to get your water,” he says. “It is a connection to the natural pattern of our species. It is what we have been doing for millennia.”

Gallos, who lives in Saranac Lake, was upset when the state Department of Environmental Conservation closed King Phillip’s Spring on Route 73, just off Northway Exit 30. King Phillip’s was one of the most visible and most popular springs in the Adirondacks. Driving past on a hot summer day, a motorist often could see people lined up to fill bottles from a pipe sticking out of a chain-link fence. The water seeps naturally to the surface in the woods, where it had been captured in a spring box and piped downhill to the fence.

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