ADIRONDACK COUNCIL
CALLS ON DEC TO REMOVE FIRE TOWER & RESTORE PUBLIC TRUST
IN THE IMPARTIALALITY OF HEARINGS
After DEC Writes to Council Activists and Others Asking Them
to Change Their Criticism of DEC’s Refusal to Obey Law on
Fate of Wilderness Area
For more information:
John F. Sheehan
518-432-1770 (ofc)
518-441-1340 (cell)
518-456-4512 (home)
Released: Monday, February 27, 2006
ALBANY, N.Y. – The Adirondack Council today called on the
NYS Department of Environmental Conservation to stop manipulating
the official record of public criticism it received over DEC’s
controversial plan to ignore a state law that requires DEC to
remove all structures from a remote, Forest Preserve mountaintop.
The Adirondack Council –
the Adirondack Park’s largest environmental organization
– called on DEC to reverse its current illegal course and
remove the tower, as required by the Adirondack Park State Land
Master Plan.
“DEC’s actions in this
case are a breach of the public trust,” said Adirondack
Council Executive Director Brian L. Houseal. “DEC is supposed
to collect public comment, not try to reshape it after people
have made up their minds.
| “It
is bad enough that a DEC planner spent an hour at the start of
the public hearing laying out DEC’s opinion of the best
choices for Wakely Mountain,” Houseal said. “Having
heard his speech and having read the DEC’s pre-formed opinion,
members of the public still disagreed with DEC’s position
and submitted written comments saying so. At that point, DEC
sent a packet of information, complete with illustrations --
to those who had submitted comments it didn’t like. DEC
urged them to send in a new letter – one better suited to
DEC’s point of view and the outcome DEC wished to create. |
Excerpt
of Letter from DEC to Objectors
The
letter states it is DEC's "hope that you will not easily
be convinced that those entrusted with the care of the Forest
Preserve would intentionally propose to violate the New York
State Constitution or the laws that govern Forest Preserve management.
After you have reviewed the issues in full, I hope you will
respond again." |
|
“Since when does the judge
get to sit in the witness box and testify, while also instructing
the jury how to vote?” Houseal asked. “If DEC has already
made up its mind, why go to the trouble and expense of holding
a public hearing? Why create the ruse that public opinion means
anything?
“We strongly urge DEC to
fulfill the legal mandate of the State Land Master Plan by removing
the obsolete fire tower and adjacent, non-conforming structures,”
Houseal said.
View from the Summit of Wakely Mountain,
without using the fire tower. |
|
The Adirondack Council’s
comments came as a result of DEC’s plan to over-rule the
State Legislature’s long-standing instructions for restoring
the top of Hamilton County’s Wakely Mountain to a state
of Wilderness.
The Adirondack Park State Land
Master Plan (SLMP), created by the Legislature only two years
after it created the DEC (1970 and 1972 respectively), clearly
|
states that the obsolete
fire tower atop Wakely Mountain should have been removed nearly
20 years ago. It further states that the mountaintop should be
cleared of all “non-conforming structures” so the summit
can be managed as part of the Blue Ridge Wilderness.
In the Master Plan’s brief
description of Wakely Mountain Primitive Area is the clear statement:
“Once the fire tower on Wakely Mountain is no longer needed,
this area should be made part of the Blue Ridge Wilderness”
(pp.81-2).
Also germane is the SLMP’s
dictate on structures in Wilderness (p.21): “All other structures
and improvements, except for interior ranger stations themselves,
will be considered nonconforming. Any remaining non-conforming
structures that were to have been removed by the December 31,
1975 deadline but have not yet been removed, will be removed
by March 3l, l987. These include but are not limited to:
-- lean-to clusters;
-- tent platforms;
-- horse barns;
-- boat docks;
-- storage sheds and other buildings;
-- fire towers and observer cabins;
-- telephone and electrical lines;
-- snowmobile trails;
-- roads and state truck trails;
-- helicopter platforms …”
“Despite this clear-as-day
instruction to the DEC from the State Legislature and the Governor,
the DEC is now balking at removing the tower, observer cabin
and helicopter platform and is hoping to add a radio antenna
to the tower itself, actually increasing the number of non-conforming
intrusions into an area that should have been reclassified as
Wilderness in 1987,” Houseal said. “When we called
this to DEC’s attention, our members received condescending
responses telling them they were misguided and should change
their comments.
“All indications pointed
to the fact that DEC was being buried in an avalanche of criticism
of its plan to maintain the obsolete fire tower,” Houseal
said. “Now, who knows? The entire record is compromised.
How do we know the public has been heard?”
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.
Other Excerpt from DEC's Packet to Objectors:
"I have received numerous emails and letters in response
to our request for public comments on the draft plan. Many of
them focus on issues mentioned in an action alert distributed
by an Adirondack organization. Unfortunately, it is difficult
in a short letter for an organization to present important issues
in all their complexity. In some places, the letter presents
the organization’s positions on issues in the form of legal
interpretations that are not shared by the Department’s
planning team."
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