ADIRONDACK COUNCIL
OPPOSES STATE PLAN TO RETAIN FIRE TOWER
RE-BUILD HELICOPTER PAD & CABIN ON WILDERNESS SUMMIT
State's New Plan for Blue Ridge Wilderness and Wakely Mt.
Primitive Area Violates Specific Instructions within Adirondack
State Land Master Plan
For more information:
John F. Sheehan
518-432-1770 (ofc)
518-441-1340 (cell)
518-456-4512 (home)
Released: Monday, February 6, 2006
BLUE MOUNTAIN LAKE, NY - The
Adirondack Council today urged state officials to drop a plan
to create an emergency communications station and mini-airport
on a mountaintop in one of the most remote sections of the Adirondack
Forest Preserve. The Council also called on the state to stop
cutting trees on mountaintops to improve the view for hikers.
As the Adirondack Park's largest environmental organization,
the Council called on its 18,000 members and everyone who cares
about Wilderness to attend a public hearing on Tuesday (Feb.
7) at the Adirondack Museum here, or to send written comments
by the Feb. 24 deadline.
The hearing is being held by the NYS Department of Environmental
Conservation (DEC). It will focus on DEC's recommendations for
future management of the Wakely Mountain Primitive Area and adjoining
Blue Ridge Wilderness.
"The state wants to convert a remote, Forever Wild mountaintop
into an emergency command center in the middle of nowhere,"
said Adirondack Council Executive Director Brian L. Houseal.
"This mountaintop is 11 miles into the woods west of the
tiny hamlet of the Sabael, on Indian Lake, and eight miles into
the woods southeast of the even tinier hamlet of Raquette Lake.
This is an incredible waste of resources and equipment and a
direct contradiction of long-standing state environmental policy.
"This mountain summit was supposed to get wilder under the
new management plan and was due to become part of the adjoining
Blue Ridge Wilderness," Houseal explained. "The Adirondack
State Land Master Plan specifically requires DEC to remove the
obsolete fire tower and to start managing Wakely Mountain as
Wilderness. That means no tower, no road, no cabin, no helipad,
no noisy wind turbine, no electricity and neither radio antennas
nor microwave dishes.
"Unbelievably, DEC is planning to keep the tower, cover
it in radio equipment and add both a cabin and a helipad,"
he said.
Houseal reminded DEC officials that it is quite unusual for the
Adirondack State Land Master Plan - the state's official, broad
management plan for all types of Forever Wild Forest Preserve
in the Adirondack and Catskill parks - to dictate specific actions
for specific locations. The ASLMP is a framework developed in
the 1970s to establish rules for all Adirondack Wilderness, Wild
Forest, Canoe and Primitive areas. Once that was completed, DEC
was supposed to develop specific management plans for each of
the Park's 15 Wild Forests and 16 Wilderness Areas (as well as
the other categories). After three decades, the specific, unit
plans are still a work in progress.
"It is improper and may not be legal, for the individual
unit management plans to contradict, or overrule, the State Land
Master Plan," said Houseal. "DEC should not have made
such a proposal. It should be withdrawn immediately."
Houseal said it was possible that DEC was being pressured by
the NYS Police or the State Emergency Management Office to allow
the tower to remain and to be covered in radio equipment.
| "If that is the case, this would be the third
Adirondack Park fire tower taken over by the State Police/SEMO,
much to the detriment of those who were hoping to keep climbing
the towers," Houseal said. "The towers at Black Mountain
in the Lake George Wild Forest and on Cathead Mountain, on private
lands in Fulton County, are still standing. But no one will ever
climb them again. |
 
Cathead Mountain Fire Tower 1995
and 2005 |
Black Mountain Fire Tower |
| "They
have been boarded up and new radio lattice towers have been built
around them, much taller than the original," he said. They
are fenced off and covered with radio equipment. They are noisy
and unapproachable, and the mini-wind-turbines on them make a
sound that appears to attract swarms of dragonflies in summer
- interrupting their feeding and mating patterns." |
|
In addition to the Wakely Mountain command center issues, the
Council will state at the hearing:
1) Artificial fish stocking and "reclamation" of Wilderness
ponds should be halted. Only where careful biological studies
have shown the feasibility of removing exotic species and restoring
native species should such manipulation of wild water bodies
be allowed. DEC's plans to "reclaim" Sprague and Slim
Ponds should be shelved in favor of research to determine how
to restore the native biota of these and other Wilderness ponds.
2) Tree and brush cutting to maintain the open vista on Sawyer
Mountain should be stopped. Cutting trees violates the Forest
Preserve's Forever Wild mandate. The tree-cutting on Sawyer may
seem minor, but it sets a dangerous precedent and encourages
overuse. This Wilderness is roughly 12 percent open rock. There
are plenty of natural vistas.
3) Motorboat access up South Inlet to the Cascades should be
stopped. Motors clearly violate Wilderness standards.
4) Maintaining existing trails is generally fine, but "removing
obstacles on trails" should only be done with hand tools
- no power tools - and great caution. Rerouting the Northville-Placid
Trail off the road is recreationally desirable and ecologically
acceptable provided great care is taken to avoid sensitive habitats.
The same rigorous ecological standards should be applied to rerouting
the Wakely Mountain trail. To prevent the problem of trail sprawl
caused when hikers detour around down-trees and similar obstructions,
DEC should send a hiker with an ax and bow-saw along each trail
at least once a season.
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 missions through
research, education, advocacy and legal action.
|
