Beds at Boreas Ponds?
Environmental groups are alarmed by a conceptual proposal floated by the Cuomo administration to establish lodging facilities near Boreas Ponds—in an area they believe should be classified as “untrammeled” Wilderness.
Adirondack Park Agency
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Boreas dam drives debate
The Adirondack Park Agency held public hearings on Boreas Ponds at eight different locations around the state in November and December. Hundreds of people spoke, offering a potpourri of opinions. But one constant was a sea of green T-shirts bearing the slogan “I Want Wilderness.”
Adirondack Wilderness Advocates Issues Boreas Analysis
By Phil Brown
Adirondack Wilderness Advocates has sent the Adirondack Park Agency a detailed paper, replete with photos, maps, and charts, arguing for a Wilderness classification for nearly all of the 20,758-acre Boreas Ponds Tract. The 46-page document also contains recommendations for several other lands recently added to the public Forest Preserve. The first half of the document…
Dick Booth to step down from APA board
By Phil Brown
The Adirondack Park Agency board will soon lose its strongest defender of wilderness: Dick Booth does not intend to serve another term. Booth’s current four-year term expires June 30, but he said he will stay on awhile if a successor is not appointed by then. A professor in Cornell’s Department of City and Regional Planning,…
DEC Proposes Trail, Lean-to In Pepperbox Wilderness
By Phil Brown
The 22,560-acre Pepperbox in the western Adirondacks is one of the smaller Wilderness Areas in the Park, but it also is one of the wildest. It has no lean-tos and only two miles of foot trails. The State Land Master Plan observes that the lack of a trail system “offers an opportunity to retain a…
‘A consensus solution’
In classifying former Finch, Pruyn lands, the APA creates two large motor-less tracts but allows a snowmobile corridor to divide them. By Phil Brown AFTER MONTHS of public debate and behind-the-scenes negotiations, the Adirondack Park Agency voted in December to prohibit motorized recreation on most of the former Finch, Pruyn timberlands the state purchased from…
Parsing The Options For The Finch, Pruyn Lands
By Phil Brown
In an article in the July/August issue of the Adirondack Explorer, I examine the various options for classifying the former Finch, Pruyn lands acquired by the state from the Nature Conservancy. You can read the article here, but it also helps to peruse the table and maps included with the story. That’s what this post is…
Decision time for APA
Agency weighs a variety of options—and opinions—for managing 21,200 acres of former Finch, Pruyn lands. By Phil Brown Wild rivers, pristine ponds, deep forests, marble cliffs, a towering waterfall—the former Finch, Pruyn lands recently acquired by the state seem to have everything. If not everything, then more than enough to satisfy a variety of outdoor…
APA hires ex-commissioner as counsel
By Phil Brown
The Adirondack Park Agency has hired James Townsend, one of its former board members, to serve as the agency’s counsel. He will replace John Banta, who retired last year. A Rochester lawyer, Townsend sat on the APA board from 1999 to 2010. He left when he wasn’t reappointed by Governor David Paterson. APA Chairwoman Lani…
Protect seeks APA e-mails with Cuomo staff
By Phil Brown
Protect the Adirondacks and the Sierra Club want to see e-mails between the Adirondack Park Agency and Governor Andrew Cuomo’s staff to determine if the governor’s office improperly influenced the APA’s approval of a massive resort in Tupper Lake. John Caffry, the attorney for the two environmental groups, said the APA acknowledges that the APA…