The Adirondack Park Agency confounds critics (again)
Monday during the 8 O’clock Hour, I’ll report in-depth about the Adirondack Park Agency’s decision to allow 220 hunting camps to remain on the former Champion timber lands.
Those traditional hunting clubs have lived in the shadow of eviction since 1999 when this easement deal — one of the first big ones that reshaped land-use patterns across the Adirondacks — was negotiated by New York state and Champion.
Sportsmen were, understandably, livid.
These camps — mostly blue collar affairs, some dating back to WW2 — were part of the cultural landscape of our region, and they also provided ready access to a remote part of the Park.
The knock against the APA was echoed far and wide:
A big, unresponsive bureaucracy tosses locals on their ears; the effort to squeeze out the Park’s people takes another ugly step forward, with greenies and state officials working in cahoots.
But events this week suggest a very different narrative.
Yes, the state blundered when it created the Champion deal. Everyone involved learned a big, painful lesson on that project.
Based on the anger they sparked, green groups and state officials finally grasped the fact that these clubs were an important part of the landscape, and not a down-at-the-heels blight that needed to be removed.
In the decade since, as more conservation easements have been created, the vast majority of hunting clubs have been allowed to remain.
(The exception are those cabins that sit on actual forest preserve land, as opposed to private easement land.)
The state also circled back, at long last, and decided to revoke the decision to evict the Champion clubs. The APA voted 8-to-1 on Friday to allow 220 cabins to remain.
Was it a clumsy process? Absolutely. Was it evidence that the APA, DEC and green groups sometimes have a tin ear when it comes to community needs and values? Certainly.
But this week’s outcome suggests that critics wildly overshoot the mark when they paint the portrait of a greedy, uncaring APA leviathan, a closed-door cabal of enviro-zealots and black hat bureaucrats.
The Park is, in the end, a human institution, every bit as flawed as it is ambitious.
The near-unanimous vote to save the hunting camps suggests that this is not only a worthy experiment in enviromental regulation, but also an interesting experiment in how we might democratize and humanize conservation.
Tags: adirondacks, apa
I’ve been coming to the area all my life, and now own a home here. I have never seen one of these camps, or heard anything about them other than having to do with this controversy. I have never talked to anyone up here who has seen one, used one, or cared at all about them.
Are these things the Adirondack’s best kept secret?
No. This was a “big deal” for only a very small and specific group of people with very specific recreational needs. A very vocal minority.
It is good that the APA takes everyone into consideration and is capable of reversing course when needed, but the way this story has been presented in the news, including here, strikes me as an exaggeration of the situation.
Brian, this is a good post but I think that you are missing one point. It seems like you are saying that the APA had some part in saving these camps? As you may have heard from the agency discussion this week the agency has no part in the decision to modify the easement and allow the camps to remain. As Curt Stiles told Dick Booth repeatedly “we are not here to make policy”. As he described, their job was to look at the permit application and makes sure that what was going to stay there complied with APA regulations. The agency did a very through job in reviewing the permit and made a sound decision. The agency that modified the policy and allowed the camps to remain was the DEC (the holder of the conservation easement) after direction from the executive branch.
One thing that struck me as strange was how a few APA commissioners and others seemed to think that changing the easement was some kind of secret back door deal? Where were they when the DEC was distributing reams of information and getting tons of public input prior their decision to modify the easement?
“Was it evidence that the APA, DEC and green groups sometimes have a tin ear when it comes to community needs and values? Certainly.”
This is not entirely accurate.
This was not evidence that the APA had a “tin ear”. Again, they had no input into how the easement was designed, not this time or the first time. They just reviewed both permit applications after the DEC had decided what they wanted to do (both times).
Paul –
I think your point is well taken, but overstates the case. Yes, land conservation deals are negotiated by the DEC.
And yes, the APA often gets criticized for decisions that are mostly made by other state agencies.
But in creating and approving permits that shape actual management of these easement areas, the Park Agency plays a significant role.
Last year, the DEC and the APA created a new “memorandum of understanding” that clarifies the role of both organizations in managing the relatively new legal terrain of easement lands.
That document made clear that even in areas where the DEC holds primary authority (such as creation of recreation management plans) the APA has a significant advisory role.
Finally, it is a simple fact that if the APA commission had rejected amendments to the management plan for these areas, the old APA-plan would have remained in place.
That old plan, which had the force of law, required that the hunting camps be removed.
So yes, clearly, the APA played a role in saving these camps.
–Brian, NCPR
Brian, what confounds the APA critics more than this decision is how arbitrary they are. For example while worrying about the pitch of the roof on a boat house. They have given the go ahead for North Elba to fill in 5 miles of wet lands for a bicycle trail. I know it’s for their user group, but that is far more confusing than allowing camps that are already there to stay.
The APA wasn’t worried about “the pitch of a roof”. They were concerned about shoreline party decks and other misuses of boathouse structures that were made possible on flat roofs. Requiring a vertical rise to the roof was one way to eliminate those misuses.
If you disagree with the APA’s concern about those misuses, or their solution to them, then say that… but stop making it seem like the purpose of all of that was to regulate an arbitrary architectural feature. It is intentionally misleading to do so.
By the way, the APA has declined only .8% or projects that have come before it since 1973. That doesn’t strike me as an agency that is playing user group favorites.
Dave, I am sorry your right they were concerned with the way people were having FUN on their own property. Yes they decide to be FUN police by requiring a pitched roof so you could have a party on the roof. My feeling is they should stop worrying about false problems like party’s on top of boat house. The worry should be about real environmental degradation like the project I spoke of. This is of course for a recreational trail and their fun so it was allowed.
I am not sure where you came up with the .08% rejected but did you figure how became economically not viable because of their restrictions?
They cared about the affects that unintended increases in activity on the shore can have on shoreline environments and lakes.
I’m sure it is possible to disagree with that without distorting the situation or resorting to rhetoric (“fun police”).
The .8% is taken from an article in the Post Star.
Jim McCulley:
I don’t think there’s any way of understanding what the APA does and why.
Allowing the camps to remain is a good thing. DEC’s thinking regarding the easements has evolved over the last 15 years. The breakthrough came with the International Paper/Lyme Timber easements. I believe these were the first to allow the hunting camps to stay, creating small (1 acre) leasholds around the cabins, but permitting public access through a recreation easement on the balance of the lands. All that happened here was that the current thinking was applied to earlier easements.
So, DEC was the driver behind the change, but APA was involved in approving the permit. Both good decisions.
“So yes, clearly, the APA played a role in saving these camps.”
Yes, but nothing outside their normal zoning authority. I think Curt Stiles said it best when he said that this was a deal “between a willing buyer and a willing seller” and that they as the APA had no part in that negotiation. These camps clearly fit with the “character” of this land type so as long as the camps were compliant then they stay.
Forget about the APA. What I would like to know is this. By amending the terms of the easement (less public access), will the state get a reduction on what it paid for the easement? If not a cash back reduction, at least the current land owner should pay a higher tax and the share for the state should drop. Otherwise, this is a give away at the expense of the tax payers to two special interest groups, the land owner and the clubs.
Pete, What is the price for the tiny amount of public access that is affected? Doesn’t the state get an additional 2000+ acres of land to add to the forest preserve? They could sell that if they need the money and they do! Oh wait they can’t sell it, never mind.