ADIRONDACK COUNCIL
FILES LAWSUIT TO BLOCK ALL-TERRAIN VEHICLE
ABUSE OF PUBLIC FORESTS INSIDE THE ADIRONDACK PARK
Suit is Result of County’s Decision to Open Forests without
Counting Environmental Cost
For more information:
John F. Sheehan
518-432-1770 (ofc)
518-441-1340 (cell)
518-456-4512 (home)
Released: Thursday, October 5, 2006
LOWVILLE, N.Y. – The Adirondack Council has sued the Lewis
County Legislature in State Supreme Court in an effort to reverse
the county’s decision to open public forests in the Adirondack
Park to all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), the Council announced today.
“The trails and public lands
of the Adirondack Park are being systematically destroyed by
ATVs,” said Adirondack Council Executive Director Brian
L. Houseal. “Every new area that has been opened to them
has been savaged. Many of the trails are unusable by anyone else
after only a year or two. Making things worse, many of these
county forests provide direct access to adjacent State Forest
Preserve, where ATVs are banned. Neither state nor local law
enforcement officials have been able to gain control of illegal
trespass.”
The Council’s lawsuit (an
Article 78 petition) was filed by the organization and six of
its members, who are residents of Lewis County and live near
the forests where ATV access would be expanded.
The suit seeks to strike down
a Local Law Number 2, passed in June 2006, which allows ATVs
to be used on any county “reforestation lands.” Some
of these scattered parcels of forest are located within the Adirondack
Park in the towns of Greig and Lyonsdale. In all, the local law
would open 33 parcels of public forest, totaling 1,900 acres,
to ATV access.
“The
Adirondack Council and other organizations have documented widespread
ecological degradation caused by ATV use in the Adirondack Park,”
Houseal explained. “The western Adirondacks are especially
hard hit. Deep ruts, eroded stream beds and trampled wildlife
habitat are just some of the problems. Vandalism is out of control.
Barriers erected all over the Park to keep ATVs out of sensitive
areas have been broken and torn down.”
The basis of the Adirondack Council’s lawsuit is the County’s
failure to fulfill its duties under the State Environmental Quality
Review Act (SEQRA). |
New ATV ruts, Independence River
Wild Forest; Lewis County.
|
Those requirements include
identifying the ecological risks of the proposal, performing
a full environmental review to assess potential impacts and notifying
the public about the action.
“The county didn’t
do any of that before passing this law,” Houseal said. “If
they had looked for even a moment at the costs of what they are
proposing – both in terms of maintenance to trails and ecological
harm – they would have realized that expanding ATV territory
is bad for the county’s forests. But they had already made
up their minds before bothering to count the cost. And the public
was cut out of the decision entirely.”
Shotgun blast holes in
“Forest Preserve/No
Motorized Vehicles” sign,
and ATV tracks running past it,
Raquette-Boreal Wild Forest,
northwestern Adirondack Park. |
In late September, three
of the six Adirondack Council members who joined this week’s
suit took it upon themselves to sue Lewis County for its decision
to open a series of county roads to ATV use. Among other arguments,
the group noted that the NYS Vehicle & Traffic Law prohibits
ATVs from using any roadway where automobiles are allowed.
Last December, Lewis County reluctantly
repealed a local law that had opened county roads to ATV use,
based on an opinion from NYS Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
The push to repeal the law came from Constableville legislator
Bruce Krug, whose term ended in December. Krug is among the six
Lewis County plaintiffs who joined the Adirondack Council’s
suit this week.
The Adirondack Council is represented on the case by the Law
Office of Marc S. Gerstman, based in Albany.
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The Adirondack Council’s
mission is to ensure the ecological integrity and wild character
of the Adirondack Park. Founded in 1975, the Council is a privately
funded not-for-profit organization with 18,000 members in all
50 United States. The Council carries out its mission through
research, education, advocacy and legal action.
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