Chazy Lake seen from the summit of Lyon Mountain. Photo by Phil Brown.

The Adirondack Nature Conservancy has been cleared of wrongdoing in a probe of state land deals sparked by an article in the New York Post more than a year ago.

 “We were happy to cooperate with the investigation, and we are pleased with the outcome,” said Connie Prickett, a spokeswoman for the conservancy.

New York State Assistant Attorney General Rachel Doft wrote the conservancy’s lawyer last week to say the investigation is over.

“The Nature Conservancy complied with all relevant laws, regulations and policies in connection with those transactions,” Doft said in the letter.

The Post article, published last spring, raised questions about the state’s purchase of Lyon Mountain and adjacent lands from the conservancy in 2008 for $10 million. Four years earlier, the conservancy had paid $6.3 million to Domtar Industries for the same twenty thousand acres.

After the article appeared, Governor David Paterson asked state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo to look into the deal.

“We intend to begin an investigation into the potential overpayment by the state for these lands in the Adirondacks and into questions about the evaluation methods that were used to value the property,” a spokesman for Cuomo told the Post at the time.

 After his election as governor, Cuomo handed off the investigation to the new attorney general, Eric Schneiderman.

The conservancy maintained that the $10 million paid by the state was based on two appraisals completed by appraisers hired by the state. Prickett also noted that the conservancy bought Lyon Mountain as part of a larger deal involving 104,000 acres of Domtar land. The rest of the land was bought by Lyme Timber, but because all of the Domtar holdings were sold as part of a single transaction, she said, the conservancy benefited from the economies of scale. That is, it paid a lower price per acre than it would have if it had purchased the twenty thousand acres in isolation.

Prickett also said the conservancy paid interest, taxes, and other carrying costs during the four years it owned the property.  Much of the difference in the purchase and sale prices went toward offsetting those costs. Any leftover funds, she added, will be invested in other projects.

Doft’s letter suggests that the attorney general’s office also looked into the Nature Conservancy’s acquisition of 161,000 acres of land in the central Adirondacks formerly owned by Finch, Pruyn & Company. The state has purchased conservation easements on much of that land and plans to buy about sixty-five thousand acres outright in coming years.

The state also has plans to buy the 14,600-acre Follensby Park west of Tupper Lake. The conservancy bought Follensby and the Finch lands in 2008.

Map of proposed land-classification changes in Moose River Plains.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation has two interesting proposals for the Moose River Plains. One should make local officials happy. The other should make environmentalists happy.

The Moose River Plains is now classified as Wild Forest. DEC wants to reclassify twenty miles of dirt road as an “Intensive Use Area,” a designation usually reserved for state campgrounds.

The department does not intend to create a full-out campground, with showers, bathrooms, paved roads, and other modern amenities, but it expects to maintain up to 150 roadside campsites with fireplaces or fire rings, picnic tables, and outhouses.

The Intensive Use classification will allow more campsites than would be permitted under the Wild Forest classification. Without the classification change, in fact, DEC would be forced to close many of the existing campsites in the Plains.

The department also wants to reclassify more than fifteen thousand acres in the Plains as Wilderness, where all motorized use would be banned. As part of this proposal, the Otter Brook Road and Indian Lake Road would be permanently closed to motor vehicles, according to DEC.

The new Wilderness tract includes Little Moose Mountain, one of the Adirondacks’ hundred highest peaks, and Little Moose Lake, a large water body at the base of the mountain. The tract would be added to the West Canada Lake Wilderness.

Last month DEC touched off a controversy when it announced it lacked the resources to open the roads in the Moose River Plains (they are closed in winter). DEC has since agreed to open most of the roads—with the exception of Otter Brook and Indian Lake roads.

Asked why DEC wanted to expand the Wilderness Area, spokesman Yancey Roy replied in an e-mail: “For the overall balance of actions proposed.”

DEC will discuss its plans at Thursday’s meeting of the Adirondack Park Agency, which must schedule public hearings on the proposals.

The Albany Times Union recently ran a story in which Protect the Adirondacks blamed Governor David Paterson for the Adirondack Park Agency’s refusal to classify Lows Lake as Wilderness.

“To our knowledge, this represents an unprecedented level of interference from the governor’s office,” said Dave Gibson, the environmental group’s executive director. “The governor not only failed to appreciate this magnificent region of Lows Lake, but then … apparently allowed his staff to actively twist arms.”

The article drew a strong response from Fred Monroe, the executive director of the Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board, which lobbied against the Wilderness classification.

“Lows Lake is a man-made lake, a feat of engineering created by two concrete dams,” Monroe wrote in a letter submitted to the Times Union. “It is not a wilderness and was never classified as ‘wilderness.’ The claim that a ‘wilderness area’ has lost its status ‘for the first time in memory’ is simply false.”

Click here to read the newspaper article. Click the link below to read Monroe’s response.

Monroe letter PDF