May/June - 09
How heartening to see the Lake George Park Commission taking steps to restore the lake’s water quality (see Brian Nearing’s story on Page 10 of May/June 09). Of course, the response from developers, local government officials, and nervous landowners was sadly predictable. In this case, it was the negative reaction to the commission’s plan to establish a hundred-foot buffer zone along streams that could carry sediments and other contaminants into the lake. This long-overdue measure would prohibit future building and clearing along these tributaries, an essential step in safeguarding Lake George’s legendary purity—an attribute that continues to be compromised by destructive development of the lake’s shorelines and uplands.
The complaints about the proposed safeguards can be summed up as follows: “We own the land and pay taxes on it, and so by God we have the right to do whatever we want with it.” Or— “We don’t need Big Brother telling us what to do, we’re perfectly capable of managing our own affairs.” Or— “This is a violation of our constitutional rights because these restrictions amount to a ‘taking’ of my property.”
Developer Rolf Ronning is a leading spokesman for this school of thought. In a recent letter to the Lake George Mirror, he compared the heated response to the Lake George Park Commission’s attempt to regulate upland development to the angry reception given the Adirondack Park Agency some years ago. The then-fledgling APA was proposing to control growth by limiting the intensity of development and by reviewing any future projects that might have a “regional impact” on the Park’s resources.
Mr. Ronning recalled the meeting in Elizabethtown in 1972 at which the APA presented its Land Use and Development Plan for public discussion before submitting the final version to the state legislature. He noted that everybody at that meeting (except for a few “tree huggers”) was opposed to the development controls.
Mr. Ronning is right about the fear and resentment that greeted the APA at that time. I was there, as a new APA staff member, and the hostility was palpable. Fortunately, however, there was widespread support outside the Park, and in the spring of 1973 the APA controls became law. Dramatizing the urgent need for development restraints were the eye-popping plans for vast second-home communities inside the Blue Line. One of the developers, Horizon Corporation, envisioned 10,000 seasonal homes on 24,500 acres on and near the Grass River. Another developer wanted to subdivide 18,500 acres near Tupper Lake into a suburb of 8,000 second homes that he fancifully called Ton-da-Lay. There were other ambitious schemes on the drawing board, and taken together they could have transformed the Adirondacks.
The new land-use regulations helped to thwart these grandiose plans, but it soon became clear that the agency’s jurisdiction was quite limited and that most building projects did not require an APA permit. The damage from careless development, one house and one small subdivision at a time, has continued year after year. In the thirty-six years since the APA plan took effect, the rate of residential construction has proceeded at the same rate as before the controls were enacted. An average of eight hundred new residences, mostly second homes, have been built every year in the Adirondacks. Today there are half again as many houses in the Park as there were in 1973.
So much for the claim that the APA is stifling our economy by impeding development! Almost four decades after that contentious public meeting in Elizabethtown, many Adirondack residents now agree that the Adirondack Park Agency performs a necessary function. In fact, a growing number of critics recognize that the APA regulations aren’t adequate to protect the Park.
You don’t need to look any farther than Lake George for evidence. Unless the land has been protected by a conservation easement, most of the private shoreline has been subdivided, cleared and built on. Intrusive houses are spreading up the hills and onto ridges. The APA requires that most new houses be set back only fifty or seventy-five feet from the water. The APA’s other shoreline restrictions are equally ineffective, allowing broad swaths of trees and other natural vegetation to be cleared between house and lake, allowing polluting, suburban-style lawns to extend to the water’s edge, allowing septic systems to be constructed too close to the water, and doing almost nothing to protect the fragile uplands surrounding the lake. The result has been a steady degradation of water quality and scenic beauty.
Despite decades of shortsighted land exploitation, starting at the end of WW II, Lake George remains one of the world’s loveliest bodies of water. For this we can thank the forever-wild state lands on and above the lake, and the heroic actions of individuals and organizations like the Lake George Land Conservancy who are working to preserve as much of the lake basin as possible through conservation easements and additions to the Forest Preserve.
And now the primary land-use authority for the Lake George region has stepped up to the plate. So let’s hear it for the Lake George Park Commission and its streamside protections! The plan may need some fine-tuning, but time is of the essence. To prevent further damage to this special part of the Adirondacks, the commission must not be cowed by the powerful development interests that have been shaping the future of Lake George for far too long.
Dick Beamish, Chairman