Industry in the wilderness: Greater North Creek community rallies support for mine expansion

Critics seeks greater regulation of garnet mine operation near state wilderness area; public invited to comment on Barton Mines plan

By Gwendolyn Craig

After three years and four incomplete applications, Barton Mines’ expansion proposal is deemed ready for action by the Adirondack Park Agency. The APA board is expected to vote on the proposed permit amendments at its November meeting and is now accepting public comments through Oct. 10. 

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is conducting its own review of the mine expansion and has not yet declared Barton’s application complete.

The expansion request has drawn hundreds of letters from passionate mine supporters, multiple generations of families and businesses with ties to Barton. The mine has been a critical employer in the area with about 100 workers. It has been in existence since 1878.

In letters submitted to the APA since December 2021, supporters outweigh those with concerns about the mine expansion nine to one.

“It has been phenomenal,” said John Brodt, senior vice president of Behan Communications, which represents Barton Mines. “We have been blown away by the community’s support for the project.”

But those who have voiced concerns about the mine’s permit amendments think Barton’s  application is still lacking. They would like to see the APA, which oversees public and private development in the six-million-acre park, require more noise, dust and visual impact mitigations.

John Passacantando, a Johnsburg resident near the mine and member of the Friends of Siamese Ponds, was surprised that just weeks after the APA and DEC requested substantial technical information from Barton in August, the APA deemed the application complete.

“There are still so many questions to be answered,” Passacantando said. “We support the mine and its jobs, and we also support the jobs at the Garnet Hill Lodge and the Outdoor Center, which would feel the impacts of a much noisier mine and a 10-stories-higher dust pile than we have today.”

Passacantando and others have called on the APA to hold a hearing before an administrative law judge. Such an adjudicatory hearing is necessary for the APA board to deny or substantially change a permit. 

If the board decided at its November meeting not to authorize the permit and to hold such a proceeding, it would be the agency’s first adjudicatory hearing in over a decade.

Location and history

Barton is one of two hard-rock garnet mines in the country. It produces abrasives from the garnet removed from Ruby Mountain. It is located in the towns of Johnsburg in Warren County and Indian Lake in Hamilton County. 

The mine is on a rare slice of industrially zoned land and for some, curiously adjacent to the most protected zoning category, a wilderness area called the Siamese Ponds. The Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Plan, created in 1973, outlines these initial zoning classifications. There are only about 11,700 acres of industrial land in the park.

North, south and west of the mine, the Siamese Ponds Wilderness is one of the largest wilderness areas in the park, about 114,000 acres. The area grew as the state acquired pieces over several decades. It was logged and mined before remaining forestland suffered from wildfires and blowdowns.

In the early 1800s, settlers cleared much of the area for farming and timber, according to the wilderness area’s unit management plan. Mining took over in the second half of the 19th century. There were mines on Gore Mountain, Ruby Mountain, Humphrey Mountain and near Thirteenth Lake. 

All, except for Barton Mine Corporation on Ruby Mountain, have closed. The six-generation-owned family business was inducted into the New York State Historic Business Preservation Registry this summer.

Now protected by the state Constitution and a part of the forest preserve, the Siamese Ponds Wilderness boasts hiking, camping, hunting and fishing opportunities. Popular recreational sites include Thirteenth Lake, Puffer Pond, Chimney Mountain and Auger Falls.

The proposal

The mine’s current permit shows the quarry has about two decades of life left, but Barton representatives have warned that is closer to six years due to a lack of storage for its residual minerals, a byproduct of mining. 

The company is seeking amendments which will allow it to operate for another 67 years. 

These amendments include:

• Expanding the residual minerals pile from 73 acres to 88.4 acres;
• Lowering the quarry floor from 1,860 feet above mean sea level to 1,790 feet;
• Increasing on-site trucking and mining vehicle operation by one hour, still starting at 7 a.m. but now ending at 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday;
• Increasing off-site trucking trips from five to 16 per day, Monday through Friday;
• Reducing off-site trucking hours by five hours, still starting at 7 a.m. but ending now at 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The footprint of the mining and residual minerals pile remains on Barton property, but will draw closer to the Siamese Ponds Wildeness. Application maps show about a 500-foot buffer between the residual minerals pile’s proposed expansion and the wilderness area, and slightly less than that between the larger mining area and the wilderness area.

The amendments will allow the current residual minerals pile to increase in height by 100 feet. It will take 25 years, Barton officials estimate, before the height of the pile begins to increase beyond its currently permitted height. 

When the mine prepares to close toward the end of the century, remediation plans include using the top 20 feet of the pile to backfill the quarry.

Public support

A robust letter writing campaign by Barton Mines that began in 2021 and continued into this year shows more than 90% of individual commenters are in support of the expansion. Brodt said the company has issued several community-wide letters to keep people informed about the application and provide information on how to communicate with the DEC and APA.

Dozens of current and former staff wrote passionate testimonials, many of them second- and third-generation Barton employees. They wrote of how the mine gave them a chance to make a living and raise a family. Without the mine, many of them wrote, they would have had to seek work outside of the park and even outside of New York.

Brian Wells, chairman of the Hamilton County Board of Supervisors, wrote that “as a former employee of Barton Mines, I know first-hand the commitment the Barton Mines Corporation and the Barton family have to the surrounding communities and to the environment of the Adirondacks.”

Local school principals, municipal officials, chambers of commerce and businesses, former state Sen. Betty Little, and her successor, Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury also wrote in support. Many highlighted Barton’s charitable activities in the region. Most recently, the company donated a 200-acre recreational easement for multi-use trails, located just north of the Gore Mountain ski center.

The boards of supervisors of the counties of Essex, Hamilton and Warren County sent support resolutions or letters, as did the towns of Indian Lake and Johnsburg. 

Many comments the APA has received are sample letters drafted by Barton and signed by staff and local residents. Some were personalized with experiences of working at the mine. About three dozen of those letters had different names signed but with similar handwriting. 

It appears some households sent individual letters from each family member, creating a voluminous record of more than 1,000 pages received even before the APA’s official public comment period.

Concerns remain

Barton’s draft support letters also appear to have spurred some residents to write against the proposal. One local resident wrote the sample letter down-played the company’s impact on tourism and the environment “as they scrape away the landscape near Thirteenth Lake and replace it with a tailings pile.”

Of about 570 individual commenters, nearly 50 expressed some level of concern. Neighbors new and old feel the mine’s operations have grown louder and dustier over the last several years. 

Many of these commenters are not calling for the mine to close, but rather asking the APA to implement stricter requirements to tamp down on the noise, dust and visual impacts. Mine operators believe they are already doing those things, and in some response letters have suggested critics have a case of “NIMBY” or “not in my backyard.”

Passacatando, of the Friends of Siamese Ponds, wrote this August that Barton’s application has “no environmental assessment of the impact of the expansion on the Park’s resources.” He’d like to see a wildlife and ecological analysis of the permit amendments. The friends group is also asking for an assessment of the dust, more mitigation on the visual impacts of the residual pile and more noise mitigation.

Passacatando, a former executive director of the national organization Greenpeace, has lived in North Creek for nine years. 

“This case is a really good challenge for them (the APA) because it really is their job to find some middle path,” he said in an interview. “The experiment is we have to find a way to make all these things work here, and when Barton keeps saying they’re most worried about their jobs, I think they’re more worried about their profits. You can make that mine quieter, but it would probably take more jobs, more people.”

Protect the Adirondacks wrote that it believes the mine’s residual waste pile is akin to a solid waste management facility, operating without a permit. Barton has disagreed.

“We wish the company every good fortune as it moves ahead with its expansion plans,” wrote Protect’s Executive Director Peter Bauer. “We do, however, believe that the company needs to take seriously the concerns of local residents … and it needs to do more to protect the Forest Preserve.”

Protect has also cited the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act that requires state agencies to account for greenhouse gas emissions in permits and whether a project helps or hinders the state in its carbon reductions goals. The increased number of truck trips and increased mining should be analyzed for that, Protect has noted.

The Garnet Hill Property Owners’ Association, a group of over 80 including the Garnet Hill Lodge near the mine, is also requesting further assessment of environmental impacts.

Some residents wrote to the APA that the mine’s mill, which runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, can be heard at night through closed windows. Some provided photos of gray dust swept into piles on front porches, and expressed concern to the agency about breathing it in. Some provided photos of what appears to be dust clouds gliding over the valley from the top of the residual minerals pile. 

Brodt said Barton has not changed anything at its quarry or mill that would cause more noise and the business has instituted sound mitigation technologies. 

“We recognize the landscape around our facility has changed with the addition of new neighborhoods since the mine began operating,” Brodt said. “The company has worked very hard to be a good neighbor, to listen to concerns that any of the neighbors may have and to take any steps that we could to minimize noise.”

Some long-time members of the property association broke from their group to say they disagreed with its concerns. They did not feel the mine’s noise had gotten worse, though they wished the mine’s tailings pile was less visible. 

Top photo: Barton Mines’ residual minerals pile from the former Hooper Mine in the Siamese Ponds Wilderness. Photo by John Passacantando