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A pair of Adirondack green groups
announced Wednesday that they have filed a lawsuit with the state
Supreme Court against the Adirondack Park Agency.
Protect the Adirondacks and the
Adirondack Mountain Club jointly filed the suit, which alleges that
the APA Board of Commissioners failed to uphold established state
law when it declined to classify the waters and lakebed of Lows Lake
as Wilderness in November.
And for Protect the Adirondacks
Executive Director David Gibson, the suit has much larger
ramifications than simply protecting a single state-owned water
body.
“We go to court for all state-owned
waters in the Forest Preserve, not merely to settle the
classification of Lows Lake,” Gibson said. “Classification drives
management direction. We seek better direction about how to manage
wild waters in the Forest Preserve.”
And oddly enough, APA lawyers somewhat
agreed.
In September, APA Counsel John Banta
told commissioners that the state Land Master Plan does include a
provision for the classification of water bodies.
But after the initial vote – which
approved the initiative – was thrown out on a voting irregularity,
commissioners struck down the lake classification in October. They
did approve an 8,000-acre classification package of the lands
surrounding Lows Lake.
All three state designees reversed
previous ballots and effectively killed the push to classify the
lake itself, leading observers to believe that a media blitz by
skeptical local officials against the initiative had swayed Governor
David Paterson.
According to APA spokesman Keith
McKeever, Adirondack lakes have yet to be classified, but the
ability to do so is likely within the jurisdictional capabilities of
the agency.
Local governments argue that the push
to begin classifying waters is an example of the agency leadership
trying to expand its authority without a legislative mandate. They
also claim that it would set a precedent that could threaten private
riparian rights moving forward.
Lows Lake is part of the Lows Lake-Bog
River-Oswegatchie wilderness canoe route, which has been identified
by trade magazines and even National Geographic as some of the
finest paddling in the country.
The Lows Lake issue first reached
heated levels after the mountain club sued the state Department of
Environmental Conservation last year for not phasing out floatplane
access to the popular bass fishing destination.
-Jon
Alexander, 12-14-10
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