The Adirondack experiment works
The January/February Adirondack Explorer carries a letter by Assemblywoman Teresa Sayward concerning Protect the Adirondacks’ opposition to a constitutional amendment that would permit NYCO to mine a deposit of wollastonite currently under Forest Preserve lands. She cites Protect’s position as evidence that the Adirondack experiment that tries to sustain communities while preserving wilderness has failed.
We write as directors of Protect and as full-time Adirondack residents who welcome further discussion of these issues. We believe that NYCO has not presented enough information to determine if a land swap would provide substantial gain to the local communities, benefit the public Forest Preserve, and cause no significant environmental harm. We also believe that the high “forever wild” barrier Article 14 of the state constitution erects for land swaps shows that the experiment has succeeded. Sayward claims to value the beauty of this special place. It is the high threshold set by the constitution that preserves the beauty of the Park and prevents it from being carved up, exploited, and overrun.
Protecting the Adirondack wilderness may restrain some economic activity. Yet, Adirondack communities benefit from a robust tourist industry that Article 14 facilitates. It is untrue that protection of the environment is the principal cause of the decline of Adirondack communities. Many small towns in the United States suffer from isolation, the mechanization of industries, international competition, and the urbanization of our economy. In fact, the economies of many Adirondack communities compare favorably with small towns just outside of the Blue Line.
Finally, we take strong exception to Sayward’s repetition of the canard that environmentalists are outsiders interested only in their own agenda. We live here. We care about our communities and have invested ourselves in their welfare by volunteering in community organizations. We spend our incomes here and help sustain local merchants. Sayward seems to think that because we care about wilderness we are forever outsiders and can be treated as second-class citizens. That makes us sad and angry.
Kenneth Strike, Thendara
Lorraine Duvall, Keene
.....................................................
No need to mine Forest Preserve
Assemblywoman Teresa Sayward writes (January/February) that the Willsboro-based NYCO is in need of Forest Preserve land in order to continue future mining operations adjacent to their facility adjoining the Jay Mountain Wilderness.
She fails to mention the lengthy adjudicatory hearing that was held in 1995 at great expense to the taxpayers of New York and to many local citizens in order to create a permit for another NYCO wollastonite mine at Oak Hill in Lewis. After fifteen years the Oak Hill site still awaits serious NYCO mining to begin.
I assume NYCO Minerals and Sayward would prefer that New York taxpayers spend more time and money to change the state constitution rather than complete recovery at NYCO’s current facility and begin operations at Oak Hill.
Catherine Smith, Haverford, PA
..........................................................
Dire forecast came true
In the mid-1980s on an Adirondack Park Agency field trip, the superintendent for Litchfield Park, John Stock, a pretty astute forester, stated that the beech die-back was as serious a problem as acid rain.
I thought, you have got to be kidding: His concern was made clearer when he pointed out that beech is extremely prolific and competitive, sprouting en masse from old roots. He predicted that most, if not all, would succumb well before reaching maturity and they would be of poor quality. At the same time, and this is a critical and devastating factor, these poor-quality sprouts would occupy vast areas that could be populated by sugar maple and yellow birch. The darn beech sprouts—the “sons of beeches,” so to speak, and daughters as well—would usurp the northern hardwood sites.
Sadly as well, about the time that the scale insects were attacking the southern Adirondacks and moving north, lumbermen and women had developed a process of curing beech to increase its worth and importance, making the beech loss of greater concern.
Now I see from the Explorer’s coverage of this issue that Stock’s forecast is tragically coming true.
Gary Randorf, the Philippines
...........................................................
Remove rail; promote growth
I read with interest in your last two issues about the Adirondack Scenic Railroad. The first article detailed different possibilities for the corridor, including the plan to extend the ten-mile-long tourist line, now operating between Lake Placid and Saranac Lake, another twenty-five miles to Tupper Lake.
The January/February issue included a debate about removing the tracks versus keeping the tracks. It was quite telling that Dan McClelland, who advocates expanding the tourist line, agrees that Tupper Lake would get more business if the tracks were removed for snowmobiling in the winter. And he doesn’t really dispute the argument that this “recreationway” would also attract more tourists in the spring, summer, and fall if it were used as a trail for bicycling, hiking, etc. His reason for extending the train service, at endless additional costs to the cash-strapped state, seems to be based largely on nostalgia and the fact that this is the last railroad operating in the Adirondacks. He obviously doesn’t understand why it is the last one!
Almost everywhere that rails have been converted to trails they have attracted large numbers of tourists. As one of many examples, Mr. McClelland should listen to the mayor of Rockmart, Georgia, who had this to say about the new Silver Comet Trail in his area: “We had more tourism in the last twelve months of the trail than we had in the last thirty years of the train.”
Since the mid-1970s, taxpayers have spent an estimated $40 million to restore tourist service on the upper and lower ends of the Remsen-to-Placid line. The more money the state continues to squander this way, the more we will hear from the Adirondack Scenic Railroad that “we can’t take the tracks out now since we’ve already invested so much money on them.” If the railroad boosters prevail, we will lose the potential benefits of an urgently needed recreationway for another thirty years.
Instead, let’s take advantage of this incredible opportunity. Let’s work together to create a recreational trail that will connect our communities, boost our economy, and make Tupper Lake a true tourist destination.
Jim McCulley, Lake Placid
McCulley is president of the Lake Placid
Snowmobile Club.