This week, local government leaders from Hamilton County wrangled a meeting with Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Peter Grannis.<\/p>\n
Their demands were simple: partner with us to find a way to open the Moose River Plains road system in time for this weekend’s holiday tourist traffic.<\/p>\n
“This is the budget crunch this year,” said Inlet town supervisor John Frey. “But we also want to be open to talks to be able to help in a long-range situation should the need be there.”<\/p>\n
A similar deal was worked out recently to reopen the Caroga Lake campground in the southern Adirondacks, with the town of Caroga picking up a part of the tab.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, activists and Paul Smiths College officials are working to maintain operations at the Visitor Interpretive Center this summer north of Saranac Lake.<\/p>\n
Obviously, the inability of the DEC and the Adirondack Park Agency to fund basic operations and stewardship has dealt a blow to the state’s already bruised reputation in the North Country.<\/p>\n
And these ambitious efforts by local residents and government leaders raise important questions about where we go from here.<\/p>\n
For starters, why didn’t the state take a more pro-active approach, trying to find solutions that could keep these facilities open?<\/p>\n
Were they playing politics by threatening to shut down these popular destinations in the Park, in order to get the legislature’s attention?<\/p>\n
Or did state officials feel for some reason that working responsibly to shift more management control to towns and counties was a non-starter?<\/p>\n
Perhaps most worrisome of all, did the DEC’s dwindling staff simply lack the foresight and planning capacity to develop alternatives to devastating closures?<\/p>\n
Another question here is why the environmental groups aren’t playing a more active and visible role in coming up with practical solutions?<\/p>\n
If cash-strapped towns and counties can reopen campgrounds and road systems, surely green groups can chip in, perhaps using volunteers to replace some of the the assistant forest rangers who won’t be hired this summer.<\/p>\n
Or conducting much-needed trail maintenance, without sending a bill to the state. Or volunteering for a summer to run one of the VICs.<\/p>\n
In any case, it’s clear now that local government leaders are the ones pushing for creative partnerships and solutions.<\/p>\n
At least one environmental activist, the Open Space Institute’s Joe Martens, has acknowledged that the beefed-up role of towns and counties probably warrants more authority and influence.<\/p>\n
“Some of the old assumptions about how the park is going to be managed will have to be re-examined,” Martens said in a recent interview with NCPR.<\/p>\n
“We are going to have to rely on the communities themselves more. I think there’s going to have to be more of an emphasis on communities getting involved in issues of management in the Park and maybe more deference to some of the communities in the Park than in the past. Because if the state doesn’t have the resources to do it, somebody has to.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If Hamilton County finds a way to reopen the Moose River Plains road system, we may already be seeing the first rough draft of a new paradigm for the Adirondack Park coming into focus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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