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Photo by Nancie Battaglia
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DEC proposes to build 12-foot-wide trails along roads and
along the edges of the Forest Preserve and close some interior
trails. |
Snowmobilers, foes alike feel they're being taken for a ride
Both sides view with suspicion DEC's plan
to reshape snowmobiling in the Adirondacks. Environmentalists raise
numerous legal questions.
By Phil Brown
It’s a plan with a grandiose title and
grand ambitions—namely, to redesign the snowmobiling system
in the Adirondacks in a way that pleases both snowmobilers and environmentalists.
The Draft Comprehensive Snowmobile Plan for the Adirondack Park
has indeed united the two sides: Both fiercely oppose it.
Nevertheless, the state opened a series of public hearings on the
document in February, with the ultimate aim of implementing a plan
whose consequences remain unclear and which contains proposals of
dubious legality.
Critics say the plan is so vague as to violate the State Environmental
Quality Review Act (SEQRA), which re-quires a detailed analysis
of projects that could harm the environment.
“They can’t even show us where they want the trails
to be,” said John Sheehan, spokesman for the Adirondack Council.
“This is a half-finished job at best. To indicate that it
is ready for the public suggests they weren’t really taking
the plan seriously.”
David Gibson of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks
argues that the plan—drafted by the state Department of Environmental
Conservation (DEC) and the state Office of Parks, Recreation and
Historic Preservation—should be treated as nothing more than
an advisory document to be submitted to the Adirondack Park Agency.
As things stand now, the APA will review the plan, but the other
two agencies will decide whether to implement it.
At the heart of the plan is a compromise that tries to balance the
demands of snowmobilers for wider, safer trails and the complaints
of environmentalists that snowmobiling detracts from the wild character
of the publicly owned Forest Preserve.
For the snowmobilers, the plan proposes a network of smooth, 12-foot-wide
trails that would parallel highways and link the major Adirondack
hamlets. They would be groomed by large machines like those seen
at ski resorts. These “community connector” trails would
enable riders to travel rapidly, perhaps at speeds greater than
40 mph, from one end of the Park to the other, thus promoting long-distance
touring and helping lift communities out of their annual winter
doldrums. In exchange, snowmobilers would give up some trails in
the heart of the Forest Preserve, resulting in a wilder interior.
DEC hopes to build the new trails on private and state lands. The
rub is that the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan, adopted
in 1972, requires that snowmobile trails have “essentially
the same character as a foot trail.” Under current policy,
the trails can be no wider than 8 feet, except on curves and on
steep slopes. Amending the master plan is a lengthy process whose
outcome cannot be guaranteed.
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Photo by Nancie Battaglia |
Snowmobilers are
demanding new trails to accommodate the large, powerful sleds
sold today. |
Jim Jennings, executive director of the New York State Snowmobile
Association, fears that the community connectors never will get
built but interior trails will be closed. DEC, however, promises
not to close interior trails before the connectors are created.
Nevertheless,
Jennings has other objections, mostly having to do with trail design.
“It’s supposed to be a snowmobile plan, and it’s
more of an appease-the-environmentalists plan,” he said.
Jennings sides with environmentalists, however, in faulting the
state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) for failing
to provide the snowmobile task force that worked on the document
with an inventory and maps of existing trails at the outset. The
task force, which included Jennings, environmentalists and local
officials, met off and on for three years, but DEC never even revealed
how many miles of snowmobile trails exist in the Preserve. The plan’s
final draft, released after the group’s last meeting, says
there are up to 1,200 miles of trails, some of them illegal. It
also includes sketchy maps of the trails, but they are nearly indecipherable
and do not distinguish between legal and illegal trails. “The
maps are terribly obtuse,” Gibson said. “I couldn’t
identify a trail vs. a road vs. a stream.” (DEC has since
issued a color map.)
Nor does the plan specify where the community connectors will be
built (some may prove to be infeasible) or which interior trails
will be closed. In short, critics say, the snowmobile plan is like
an itinerary with no starting point and no endpoint and thus impossible
to evaluate.
“We begged them to give us that information up front,”
said Neil Woodworth, lawyer for the Adirondack Mountain Club (ADK),
“and let us work out the whole plan, which trails would be
added and which ones would be subtracted. Everybody wanted to know
where they were going to be at the end of the process, what they
were going to get and what they were going to have to give up.”
“We’re going to be against the plan as it is written
now,” Jennings said. “It just leaves too much up in
the air.”
DEC spokesman Michael Fraser said the task force was created to
reach a broad consensus on the future of snowmobiling in the Park,
not to determine which trails should be built and which abandoned.
Such decisions, he said, will be made as the agency prepares unit
management plans (UMPs) for individual Forest Preserve tracts.
“In no way is the draft plan designed to predetermine the
UMP process, where site-specific decisions can and should be made,”
Fraser said in an e-mailed reply to questions. “This is the
beginning of a process that will take several years to complete.
Furthermore, because we do not have private-land agreements and
state-land connections do not exist in many instances, at this time
we cannot possibly speculate on specific areas of future trail development.”
Some suspect that DEC withheld information on existing trails to
avoid disclosing that snowmobilers are riding illegally in the Preserve.
DEC is responsible for policing the trails. “There are a lot
of illegal trails, maybe several hundred miles,” Gibson said.
“This is an ongoing issue of lax enforcement, lack of oversight.”
MILEAGE CAP
The State Land Master Plan decrees that there shall not be “any
material increase” in the mileage of snowmobile trails in
the Preserve over what existed in 1972, when the plan was adopted.
In 1980, DEC surveyed the trails and put this figure at 848.88 miles.
In 2001, DEC did another survey, using the global positioning system,
and found 1,195 miles of snowmobile routes in the Preserve—741
miles of forest trails, 401 miles of roads, 49 miles of railroad
bed and 4 miles of utility line corridors. This information was
not given to the task force.
DEC admits that some of the trails discovered in the later survey
are illegal and that some of the roads may actually belong to towns
or private landowners. The agency also says it cannot vouch for
the 848.88 figure, noting that there is no map accompanying the
earlier survey. DEC also says staffers applied inconsistent criteria
in the 1980 survey: Some included Forest Preserve roads in the trail
mileage, while others did not.
The bottom line is that DEC does not know how many miles of trails
existed in 1972, does not know how many miles of legal trails exist
today and cannot explain the vast discrepancy between the two surveys.
Given these uncertainties, the agency proposes to do away with the
mileage cap while leaving in place the “no material increase”
standard.
Norman Van Valkenburgh, who oversaw the 1980 survey, concedes that
it was less than perfect, but he maintains that it was reasonably
accurate. “It may not have been exactly 848 miles, but it
probably was between 800 and 900,” said Van Valkenburgh, who
retired in 1986 as director of DEC’s Division of Lands and
Forests. He believes a growth in illegal trails accounts for much
of the difference between the two surveys.
(A 1967 article in Adirondac, the magazine of the Adiriondack
Mountain Club, reported that there were then about 1,110 miles of
snowmobile routes in the Preserve: 505 miles of “jeep roads,”
294 miles of foot trails and 311 miles of state, county and town
public roads.)
Preservationists oppose lifting the mileage cap. Woodworth argues
that doing so would make it impossible to gauge if an increase in
mileage in the Preserve is “material” or not. “It’s
like taking the inches and feet off the yardstick,” he said.
“You still have the yardstick, but there’s no way of
measuring with it.”
Woodworth also disputes DEC’s contention that it can eliminate
the mileage cap through a change in agency policy. He insists that
it requires an amendment to the State Land Master Plan, which is
administered by the Adirondack Park Agency. “They developed
that number [848.88 miles] in order to satisfy a requirement of
the APA,” he said. “Without the consent of the Park
Agency, they can’t just sweep it away.”
A PIECEMEAL APPROACH?
Environmentalists also see practical and legal problems with DEC’s
proposal to make decisions about trails as it prepares unit management
plans for the various Forest Preserve tracts. Most snowmobile trails
are located in Wild Forest Areas, which comprise 1.3 million acres
of the Forest Preserve. They are banned from Wilderness Areas, which
total 1.1 million acres.
Peter Bauer, head of the Residents’ Committee to Protect the
Adirondacks (RCPA), points out that the Bog River UMP, approved
a few years ago, expanded the unit’s snowmobile system from
7 miles to 12 miles, on the ground that, taking the Park as a whole,
the additional 5 miles represented no material increase in trails.
“If the Bog River plan is the standard,” he said, “we
could double the amount of snowmobile trails and not have a material
increase.”
Woodworth notes that the community connectors would traverse several
Wild Forest Areas. What happens, he asks, if a trail is authorized
in the individual plans of all but one Wild Forest Area? Will the
whole trail be scotched? Will it dead-end somewhere? Will DEC stretch
the rules to complete the trail?
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Photo by Nancie Battaglia |
Should tractor groomers
be allowed on the Forest Preserve? |
Woodworth also said the State Environmental
Quality Review Act requires that the snowmobile plan be evaluated
as a whole, not unit by unit. “I don’t see how the Park
Agency can do a cumulative analysis of the plan,” he said.
“Under SEQRA, you must fully explore all the potential impacts.
You can’t piecemeal it.”
Fraser points out that the draft plan doubles as a Generic Environmental
Impact Statement—as opposed to an impact statement written
for a specific site. Under SEQRA, he said, the purpose of such a
document is to set forth broad criteria for future decisions. “The
plan has application over the entire Adirondack Park, and therefore
called for a more conceptual SEQRA review,” Fraser said.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
Critics say the snowmobile plan violates SEQRA in other respects.
The law requires that the impact analysis contain “a description
of the proposed action and its environmental setting.” Preservationists
contend that the plan fails to satisfy the law inasmuch as it does
not describe the existing trail system or specify which trails will
be closed or where new trails will be built.
Nor does it assess the impact of attracting more snowmobiles to
the Park—perhaps thousands more a day. “If you build
a trail from Plattsburgh to Old Forge, how many snowmobiles are
going to use it and what are the air-pollution impacts?” Woodworth
asks. Even if most of the snowmobiles stay near highways, he said,
they still can be heard a mile or two into the woods. “Many
visitors who come to the Adirondacks just for the scenery don’t
get far from the roads,” he said. “This could really
change their winter experience.”
Critics also say DEC’s review of scientific literature was
insufficient to assess the environmental impacts of snowmobiling
in the Adirondack Park. In 2001, the agency hired a college intern
to search for snowmobile studies. “The resulting list was
disappointingly short,” the plan says, noting that only 28
relevant studies were found, dating as far back as 1973.
John Sheehan of the Adirondack Council said the snowmobile plan
“ignores many of the studies that talk about emissions, noise
pollution and the impacts on wildlife.” He noted that such
studies persuaded a federal judge in December to uphold a ban on
snowmobiles in Yellowstone Park.
Peter Bauer of the Residents’ Committee argues that DEC should
conduct its own studies rather than rely on research conducted elsewhere.
For starters, he said, the agency should measure the air quality
in places where snowmobile traffic is heavy, such as Old Forge and
the Moose River Plains.
 |
Photo
by: Nancie Battaglia |
| Two snowmobile riders
zip across the Chateaugay Lakes in the northeastern Adirondacks.
|
Bauer and others are also worried that the roadlike community connectors
will attract all-terrain vehicles, which have trespassed in many
parts of the Forest Preserve and chewed up trails. The draft plan
acknowledges the ATV problem and promises that “efforts will
be made to eliminate trespass to the greatest extent possible.”
Fraser said the questions raised by environmentalists will be addressed
in the UMPs, where the environmental impacts of building specific
trails can be examined in detail.
PREMISE QUESTIONED
There are other legal questions that the draft plan fails to examine,
starting with the fundamental goal of attracting more snowmobilers.
The snowmobile plan talks optimistically about the economic benefits
that Adirondack towns would enjoy from a growth in snowmobiling,
but it does not address a possible conflict between this goal and
the State Land Master Plan.
One of the master plan’s guidelines for managing Wild Forest
Areas states: “Public use of motor vehicles [whose definition
includes snowmobiles] will not be encouraged.” Bauer said
the snowmobile plan is at odds with the management guideline. “It
goes well beyond encouragement,” he said. “It is open
solicitation.”
Fraser’s reply: “Nowhere in the plan does it say the
department is encouraging increased use of snowmobiles in the Park.
The plan seeks to reduce snowmobile use in interior areas and relocate
them along public highways, thereby reducing the areas of Forest
Preserve land in which [snowmobiles] are used.”
Yet the plan lists as one of its goals: “Promoting tourism
and economic opportunities for local communities” by improving
the connections in the trail system. Elsewhere, the plan states:
“Implementation of the snowmobile plan for the Adirondack
Park may result in increased snowmobile use throughout the Adirondack
region.” The creation of community connectors, it goes on
to say, “may in-crease the Adirondack Park’s attractiveness
to the snowmobile touring market.”
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Photo by
Nancy Ford |
Riders refuel at
a gas station in Eagle Bay outside Inlet. |
Apart from the legal issue, Bauer said not
every community wants to be on the snowmobile network. “We’ve
talked to residents who say they don’t want their town to
turn into the next Old Forge,” he said. “We’re
going to work with residents who want to develop a winter economy
that is not based upon snowmobiling.”
MECHANIZED GROOMERS
Under the State Land Master Plan, snowmobiles are the only motorized
vehicles allowed off-road in the Forest Preserve. DEC is proposing
to amend the plan to allow grooming tractors, such as the Bombardier
Snowcat, on the community connectors.
It’s unclear, however, whether mechanized groomers are permissible
under Article 14 of the state constitution, which mandates that
the Forest Preserve “shall be forever kept as wild forest
lands. . . . Nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed.”
Although judges have never ruled on the use of motor vehicles in
the Preserve, a midlevel appellate court remarked in Association
for the Protection of the Adirondacks v. MacDonald, a landmark case
in 1930, that the Forest Preserve should be used only for recreational
pursuits that do not require an artificial setting, among them hunting,
fishing, hiking and skiing. “Sports which require a setting
that is man-made are unmistakably inconsistent with the preservation
of these forest lands,” the court said.
Woodworth believes the decision militates against mechanized groomers.
“If you have to use a large Snowcat to maintain and preserve
the snow surface, that’s an artificial setting,” he
said.
Fraser likened the use of mechanized groomers to the use of other
motor vehicles in the Preserve for maintenance and operations—a
use authorized by the State Land Master Plan. Since the Plan and
its provisions were adopted after a public review, he said, they
enjoy “a presumption of constitutionality.”
On other trails, DEC proposes to allow grooming only by drags pulled
by snowmobiles or, on some interior routes, no grooming at all.
Jennings argues that the plan should permit grooming tractors to
go on any trail wide enough to accommodate them. Snowmobile clubs
have invested heavily in the tractors, he said, because they make
trails safer and more enjoyable. “Many of the trails are on
private land,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense
that when we get to state land we have to quit grooming.”
Jennings also is upset that the snowmobile plan will not permit
the removal of rocks that protrude less than six inches above the
trail. “Rocks ruin groomers,” he said. “We don’t
want any rocks. We should be able to pluck them out.”
CONSTITUTIONAL CONUNDRUMS
DEC also proposes to amend the State Land Master Plan to authorize
construction of the 12-foot-wide community connectors. Again, it’s
questionable whether such trails are permitted by Article 14.
In the MacDonald case, both the midlevel court cited earlier and
the Court of Appeals, the state’s highest tribunal, ruled
that clearing 4€ acres (and cutting 2,600 trees) to build a 1€ -mile
bobsled run, 16 to 20 feet wide, for the 1932 Winter Olympics would
violate the constitution. To build the connector trails, DEC says
it would need to clear up to 1€ acres per mile of trail. Thus, a
three-mile segment of trail could require cutting the same number
of trees as the bobsled run would have necessitated. DEC proposes
to build hundreds of miles of community connectors, which could
lead to the cutting of tens of thousands of trees in the Preserve.
Snowmobilers can point to a 1993 case in which a court ruled that
it was permissible to cut 350 trees over 1.9 miles to relocate a
hiking trail in the Catskill Forest Preserve. The court also OK’d
cutting trees to build a cross-country ski trail and five parking
lots.
“The department believes that connector trails can be sited
so as to result only in ‘immaterial’ amounts of tree
cutting, in compliance with the constitution as interpreted by these
decisions,” Fraser said.
But there are questions apart from the number of trees cut.
Environmentalists say the 12-foot-wide community connectors would
resemble roads more than trails. Is building a road for snowmobiles
legal? “It’s an interesting question,” Woodworth
said. “The courts have said you can build roads to protect
the Forest Preserve. Fire truck roads have been sanctioned in the
past. But there is a very reasonable constitutional question about
whether or not you can build roads for recreation.”
Fraser does not accept the characterization of the connector trails
as roads. “They will not be designed or constructed so as
to be suitable for the use of passenger vehicles, nor will passenger
vehicles be allowed on them,” he said. “The questions
of whether Article 14 allows the building of roads for recreation
is not relevant.”
Despite the legal doubts, Woodworth said he would not challenge
the snowmobile plan in court if ADK determines that the plan would
benefit the Preserve. “If the bulk of the Forest Preserve
is wilder because the interior trails have been eliminated or converted
to hiking trails, that may be an acceptable compromise,” he
said.
John Sheehan said the Adirondack Council believes that the 12-foot-wide
trails and the use of mechanized groomers are legal under Article
14—but barely. He said the courts may be tolerant of Forest
Preserve development that takes place along a road.
“We’re willing to try to accommodate these trails because
of their potential for helping the economy and getting traffic out
of the interior,” he said. “Maybe a court would disagree
with that. It’s entirely possible.”
Asked how wide a trail can be under Article 14, Sheehan replied:
“Wide enough to accommodate two snowmobiles passing each other
at high speed.”
IS SNOWMOBILING ILLEGAL?
The most fundamental question is whether Article 14 permits snowmobiling
in the public Forest Preserve at all. When snowmobiles appeared
on the scene in the early 1960s, environmentalists called on the
agency to ban the machines from the Preserve other than on public
roads. However the Conservation Department (the forerunner of DEC),
decided to allow them on hiking trails.
Snowmobiles had become an established presence by 1972, when the
APA adopted the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan. The master
plan allows the machines in Wild Forest Areas, but that does not
settle the constitutional question. In fact, the master plan cautions
that “no inference as to the constitutional appropriateness
or inappropriateness” should be drawn from its provisions.
Norman Van Valkenburgh, the former director of DEC’s Division
of Lands and Forests, faults the draft snowmobile plan for avoiding
the issue. “They talk about cutting trees, but they never
get to the real question: Are snowmobiles themselves unconstitutional?”
He thinks the machines do violate the “forever wild”
clause.
Asked to defend the constitutionality of permitting snowmobiles
in the Preserve, Fraser pointed out that the SLMP and the individual
unit management plans authorize snowmobile trails. “These
legally adopted plans have a presumption of constitutionality,”
he said.
Jim Jennings argues that snowmobilers have as much right as hikers
to enjoy the Preserve. If snowmobiles existed in 1894, when the
forever-wild clause was adopted, they would not have been excluded,
he said. “I really don’t believe the architects of ‘forever
wild’ thought that people should not be able to recreate in
the Preserve,” he said. “If they were around today they
would realize that snowmobiles do not do any damage to the woods.”
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