The only independent, nonprofit news organization solely dedicated to reporting on the Adirondack Park.
By Phil Brown
NOTE: THE FOLLOWING NOTICE WAS POSTED BY TOM WOODMAN, OUR PUBLISHER. New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has moved on behalf of the State of New York and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to intervene in the navigation-rights lawsuit filed against our editor, Phil Brown, by the Friends of Thayer Lake and the…
By Phil Brown
The Franklin County legislature has unanimously passed a resolution opposing the state’s proposed acquisition of Follensby Pond and some 65,000 acres once owned by Finch, Pruyn & Co., according to this story in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. The action follows a similar resolution adopted last week by the Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board. Yesterday,…
By Phil Brown
A lawyer for the state Department of Environmental Conservation argues that his former boss misconstrued the Highway Law in dismissing a ticket against a Lake Placid man who drove his pickup truck on an abandoned road in the Sentinel Range Wilderness. Randall Young, the top attorney in DEC’s Region 6, is asking the commissioner of…
By Phil Brown
The Adirondack Council is accusing the Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board of misleading the public in its critique of the state’s plan to buy Follensby Pond and former Finch, Pruyn lands. In a news release this morning, the council asks that the Review Board withdraw a resolution calling on the state to back out of the land…
By Phil Brown
The state Department of Environmental Conservation’s plan to move its Adirondack emergency dispatchers from the Lake Placid region to Albany is creating quite a stir. Critics contend the move will make the public less safe. The argument is that dispatchers in Albany will be less familiar with the Adirondack—and its bewildering nomenclature—and this could slow…
By Phil Brown
The state Department of Environmental Conservation has granted a request by its own staff to clarify an agency decision that the Old Mountain Road in Keene—now part of the Jackrabbit Ski Trail—had never been legally abandoned and therefore could be open to motorized use. The decision by DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis in 2009 raised questions…
By Phil Brown
Joe Martens, president of the Open Space Institute, may be the state’s next environmental conservation commissioner, according to the Albany Times Union. The newspaper reported on its Capitol Confidential blog that Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo is looking at Martens, who in the early 1990s served as an environmental adviser to then-Governor Mario Cuomo, the incoming governor’s…
By Phil Brown
This afternoon I took a short walk to check out the new section of the Jackrabbit Ski Trail created recently by the Adirondack Ski Touring Council. Not surprisingly, I ran into Tony Goodwin. The ASTC executive director, Tony was working with a pick-ax and chainsaw to remove large roots from trail. A helper, Bill Dora,…
By Phil Brown
The Adirondack Mountain Club is objecting to the state’s recommendation to allow mountain biking on an old road in a portion of the Moose River Plains that has been proposed to be designated Wilderness. ADK Executive Director Neil Woodworth said the mountain-bike corridor would set a bad precedent and could open the door for other…
By Phil Brown
The ouster of Pete Grannis as the state’s environmental conservation commissioner has shocked and outraged green groups. A former Manhattan assemblyman, Grannis was seen as a friend of the environment long before he was appointed by Governor Eliot Spitzer to head the Department of Environmental Conservation. Grannis’s biography and photo were removed from DEC’s website…