Adirondack Park Agency approves ACR permit
In mid-January, the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) approved a permit for the development of the Adirondack Club and Resort (ACR) project in Tupper Lake, the largest development ever to come before the Agency. The Adirondack Council has been closely engaged in the ACR's conceptual review, mediation process, and adjudicatory hearing which led to the final approval. The review process was arduous, contentious, time consuming and expensive for everyone involved.

Permit with conditions avoids "undue adverse impacts."
Given the modifications to the original design and additional requirements attached to the permit, the Adirondack Council supported the APA's final 10 to 1 decision to approve the permit. The permit stipulates benchmarks that the developer must meet as the project moves forward, and the conditions related to water quality, wildlife habitat and wild character represent a valid effort to avoid undue adverse impact, the legal measure by which the APA must base its permit decisions.

The APA closely followed the rules and regulations set forth by their legal mandate.
Unfortunately, many of those rules have not been changed since the APA Act was approved in the early 1970's, even though the disciplines of conservation biology and land use planning have greatly evolved. There is much improvement needed at the agency if we hope to protect the wild and healthy Adirondack Park we were so fortunate to inherit from our ancestors.

Adirondack Council involvement improved the project
The Council's vision of the Adirondack Park includes vibrant communities. We are committed to helping create the solutions needed to ensure the future of the Park's towns and villages, while championing protection of the Park's natural resources.

Over the past 7 ½ years, the Council has been intimately involved in the review of the ACR project. Rather than simply aiming to defeat the project, we chose to make a positive difference. Our goal was to seek modifications that would minimize environmental impacts, and create an opportunity for new economic growth in Tupper Lake. We invested significant time, expertise and financial resources, staunchly advocating for environmental protections and improvements in the project proposal.

In the earliest stages, we met frequently with the project sponsors and their design team. As a result of those consultations and the formal mediation process, objectionable components of the project were eliminated or modified, including the removal of the shooting school, the elimination of a highly visible ridge-top subdivision, the location and size of the great camp lots, and restrictions on future subdivision.
In particular, the APA and the developer accepted the Council's request for language in the permit that prohibits future subdivision and development of the so-called large great camp lots of 300 to 1,200 acres, thereby protecting the ecological integrity of thousands of acres of land which would otherwise be potentially threatened by backcountry sprawl.

The public discourse during the review process was often contentious. The Council remained focused on communicating facts about the permitting process and scientific information relevant to the project (e.g. conservation design, wildlife impacts). During the six-week adjudicatory hearing process, the Council's technical experts in land use planning and wildlife biology clearly indicated the deficiencies in the overall project design and offered better alternatives that reduced environmental impacts. Fortunately, some of our recommendations were accepted; but others were not.

Now is the time for reforms
We wanted to see a more compact development that conserved more open space and protected more wildlife habitat from being bisected by roads. We were also hoping for some guarantee that developers would quickly rehabilitate and reopen the Big Tupper Ski Center as the centerpiece of the community's outdoor recreation attractions. Unfortunately, the Park Agency's rules and regulations are too vague and outdated to accomplish all of those goals.

The Council will now turn our attention to much-needed regulatory reforms at the APA. The Council's significant investment in expert testimony on conservation design and the impacts of backcountry development on wildlife provide a scientific, fact-based platform for new APA policies and procedures. Better definitions are needed for terms such as cluster development and wildlife assessments so that they give the Agency the standards to require development designs that are more compact and reflect scientific data on wildlife impacts. We are also calling on Governor Cuomo and the State Legislature to address fundamental flaws in the APA Act, such as the inability of the agency to charge project application fees or deny a development proposal without an adjudicatory hearing. This situation with the ACR project cost the taxpayers millions of dollars in APA staff time and resources. With the fresh perspective of lessons learned from the ACR review process, now is the time to agree on reforms and implement them as soon as possible.

Other permits and financing plan still needed
In the meantime, the ACR project still needs to secure permits from the Department of Environmental Conservation (storm water and waste water) and Department of Health, the Town of Tupper Lake, the Army Corps of Engineers as well as approvals for Franklin County Industrial Development Agency bonds to finance the project over its fifteen-year build-out. The Council will continue to monitor the enforcement of the project order and permit conditions, as well as additional environmental permitting for the project.