Ponds of ParadisePaddlers yearn for a second Canoe Area By Phil BrownDave Cilley has paddled Spider Creek many times. He’s seen turtles, ducks and deer on the narrow channel. It seems a world away from busy Fish Creek Pond State Campground, which lies nearby. One summer day, as he and his kids were heading downstream from Follensby Clear Pond, a jet ski roared past at 40 to 50 miles per hour, skirting the bog plants near the shore and destroying the tranquility. “It was scary,” he recalled. “That guy could have crashed into us.” Cilley thinks jet skis and motorboats—gas-powered ones, at least—should be banned not only from Spider Creek and Follensby Clear Pond but also from a bunch of nearby ponds and streams, all located south of Floodwood Road in the Saranac Lakes Wild Forest. Paddling from one pond to another in this water-rich region, he said, makes an ideal day trip, an easy escape from the hubbub of modern life. “Motors pollute, they’re loud, and most people don’t want them,” Cilley said. “People are looking for more motorless waters.” As the owner of St. Regis Canoe Outfitters, with a store located on Floodwood Road, Cilley might be expected to be an advocate for making these ponds motorless. But he would have no trouble finding support from paddlers in search of tranquility. It’s estimated that only 3% of the Park’s surface waters are motor-free. Consider this: • Since the Adirondack Explorer launched its Quiet Waters Campaign two years ago, nearly 8,000 paddlers have joined a petition calling on the state to prohibit gas motors on these ponds and a number of other Adirondack waters. The Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK), which has 32,000 members, has endorsed most of the campaign’s goals. • When the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) was weighing a ban on motorboats and floatplanes on Lows Lake, the agency received about 300 letters—90 percent of which favored the ban. In January, the APA voted to prohibit motorboats immediately on the 3,086-acre lake and to phase out planes over the next five years. Motorboats are allowed in the Park’s Wild Forest Areas, with some exceptions, but not in Wilderness Areas. Although there are hundreds of Wilderness ponds, most of them are too remote to reach with a canoe on your back or too tiny to bother with. Those that are accessible, such as Lake Lila, see a lot of use. Motorboats also are banned in the St. Regis Canoe Area, located just north of Floodwood Road. The ponds in the Canoe Area, like those south of the road, are connected by streams and carry trails, opening up numerous possibilities for paddling adventures. The two clusters of ponds, created at the end of the last ice age, form a geological unit. The boundaries separating them are entirely artificial: the road, old railroad tracks, a line on the map.
In a 1990 report for the Adirondack Council, ecologist George Davis recommended that the St. Regis Canoe Area be enlarged to take in the other ponds. The proposal was incorporated that year in the open-space plan of the state Commission on the Adirondacks in the 21st Century, which Davis served as executive director. Under the plan, the Canoe Area would grow from 18,606 to 28,343 acres and the number of ponds within its bounds would increase from 58 to 84. Like most of the commission’s recommendations, this one went nowhere. Environmental activists would love to see the Canoe Area expanded, but they do not see Davis’s plan as realistic, at least not in the short term. It would require the state to purchase more than a dozen private camps and to close most of Floodwood Road. The railroad tracks pose another problem: Since 1990, the Adirondack Railway Preservation Society has been moving ahead with plans to reopen the line, which would be good for tourism but detract from the wilderness setting. Neil Woodworth, lawyer and lobbyist for ADK, said one option is to create a separate Canoe Area south of Floodwood Road and the railroad. He pointed out that a Canoe Area, though managed like a Wilderness Area, can be smaller than 10,000 acres—the recommended minimum size of Wilderness Areas under the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan. “Those ponds are ideal for canoe day trips,” he said, “and they would be much more pleasant if they were motorless.” Establishing a second Canoe Area would require the Adirondack Park Agency to amend the State Land Master Plan. A simpler option would be for the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), which manages the public Forest Preserve, to use its administrative authority to declare the ponds motor-free. The Adirondack Explorer has endorsed a version of the second option as part of the Quiet Waters Campaign. Under this proposal, only gas motors would be banned from the ponds. Electric motors, which are neither noisy nor polluting, would still be allowed. The Explorer also has suggested that gas motors be banned from the Rollins Pond State Campground, which borders the Fish Creek Ponds State Campground but is farther from the main highway. “It seems like an equitable balance,” said Dick Beamish, the Explorer’s publisher. “The bigger campground would continue to be a mecca for motorized activities, while Rollins would be a sanctuary for those who prefer a quieter form of recreation.” DEC has not taken a position on any of the proposals for the ponds. Spokesman David Winchell said they will be evaluated as the agency prepares a unit management plan (UMP) for the Saranac Lakes Wild Forest. DEC expects to release a draft plan next spring.
Any proposal to banish gas motors from the ponds is bound to run into opposition from local residents and officials. After the Explorer began its Quiet Waters Campaign, two Tupper Lake men started a counter petition—an action endorsed by the village’s weekly newspaper. In nearby Harrietstown, a committee appointed by the town drafted 20 recommendations for the Saranac Lakes UMP. First on the list: “Where motorized use currently exists, it should be maintained.” Don Duso, owner of the Crescent Bay Marina on Lower Saranac Lake, does not mince words about efforts to kick motorboats off Adirondack waters: “It stinks. These environmentalists are ruining this country. It’s getting so you can’t do anything up here any more.” Dick Parent of the Tupper Lake Rod and Gun Club also opposes making all the ponds motorless, complaining that Quiet Waters advocates are too extreme in their demands. “They want the whole nine yards,” he said. “You can’t go anywhere anymore because of the canoeists.” Yet Parent, who works as a guide, said he would not mind if gas engines were banned from some of the smaller waters south of Floodwood Road, such as Horseshoe Pond, Little Square Pond and Fish Creek. In fact, motorboats are seldom seen on most of the waters in question. On five of the ponds and two streams, DEC permits only electric motors and gas engines of 5 horsepower or less. The water that gets the most use by large motorboats is Follensby Clear Pond, a 2-mile-long lake accessible by a boat launch on Route 3. Winchell, the DEC spokesman, said toughening the agency’s regulations to ban gas engines from all or most of the ponds south of Floodwood Road could take one or two years and involve public hearings. “It’s not a real simple process,” he said. Davis and Woodworth, however, argue that reclassifying the ponds as a Canoe Area would offer stronger legal protection than would changing the agency’s regulations. They also say it would give the public a clear message: This is a place for canoes, not motorboats. Although Woodworth doubts that the state would close Floodwood Road to join the two Canoe Areas, Davis hasn’t given up on the dream first articulated in 1990. Yet, he also recognizes that it won’t be realized overnight. “There’s a zillion ways you can do this,” Davis said, “but first you have to decide we’re going to have a bigger Canoe Area—it might not happen for 50 years, but we’re going to start now.” Speak up! What are your thoughts on banning motorboats from the ponds south of Floodwood Road? Send your comments to Steven Guglielmi, who is drafting the state’s unit management plan for the Saranac Lakes Wild Forest:
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