ALBANY — An Adirondack watchdog group has praised and panned politicians, legislative bodies and governmental agencies for their environmental actions in 2008.
The Adirondack Council has released its annual "State of the Park" report, offering the group's take on how "the actions of local, state and federal officials (have) helped or hurt the ecological health or wild beauty of the Adirondack Park over the past 12 months."
The report issued Thursday is meant to be used as a guide to voters interested in public policy as it relates to environmental issues and to keep the public abreast of governmental actions.
The council gave former Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer a thumbs-up for his commitment to purchase almost 58,000 acres of timber company land for addition to the Adirondack Forest Preserve.
Gov. David A. Paterson got a thumbs-up for putting $255 million into the state Environmental Protection Fund, which is dedicated for things like land acquisition, landfill closures and recycling facilities. But he, Mr. Spitzer and the state Legislature were criticized for "raiding" the fund — taking $125 million to balance the state budget.
Both Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Paterson got a thumbs-down for failing to appoint a new director for the Adirondack Park Agency, a position vacant since early 2007.
The state Senate and Assembly earned council praise for legislation extending "net metering" rights to small businesses. This gives them the right, already enjoyed by homeowners, to sell to power companies any excess electricity generated by wind turbines, solar panels, fuel cells or farm waste.
Among area legislators, Sen. Joseph A. Griffo, R-Rome, got a thumbs-up for legislation that would have enabled local governments to designate rarely used town roads as "low" or "minimum" maintenance. The idea was to give municipalities a way to save money. A companion Assembly bill never made it past committee.
But the council gave Mr. Griffo a thumbs-down for proposing legislation to boost the weight limit on all-terrain vehicles to 1,500 pounds from 1,000 pounds. The council sees ATVs as a major cause of erosion and environmental damage. The Assembly did not address the matter.
The town of Piercefield, St. Lawrence County, earned praise for winning a $45,000 state grant to improve the energy efficiency of its town offices at an annual savings of $3,000.
The Franklin County town of Santa Clara won kudos for its six-year legal battle against a "well-financed landowner who built an illegal, floating boathouse on Upper Saranac Lake." The state Supreme Court ruled in the town's favor three times, and the boathouse has since been dismantled and the owner was fined $200,000.
Lewis County got a thumbs-down for continuing "its quest to legitimize the illegal ATV riding that has been happening across the county for a number of years." The council noted that it won a lawsuit last year against the county, forcing it to perform an environmental review before giving ATVs access to reforested lands and roads. It criticized Lewis County for "attempting to meet its legal requirements by hiring an outside consultant to perform an environmental review," which the council described as "cursory" and "deficient."
The state Traffic Safety Board won praise for creating an off-road law enforcement initiative in the wake of an increase in fatalities and injuries among snowmobile and ATV riders in Franklin County. Checkpoints manned by state and local law enforcement officials have resulted in citations and arrests for a variety of violations from speeding to operating a vehicle while intoxicated.
The Adirondack Park Agency was lauded for allowing National Grid to build a power line across six acres of Forest Preserve in Colton, St. Lawrence County. The line will provide back-up power for Tupper Lake and Piercefield; National Grid will add 10 acres of land to the Forest Preserve. The new route avoided building a six-mile road into old growth pine, wetlands and a boreal habitat for the endangered spruce grouse.
The APA also won laurels for refusing to allow landowners in the town of Greig, Lewis County, to build a 215-foot boardwalk through an emergent wetland. The landowners have since sued the APA.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation was praised for ordering the dismantling of a floating camp on Cranberry Lake, St. Lawrence County. But DEC was criticized for its failure to ban floatplanes from Lows Lake, on the border between St. Lawrence and Hamilton counties.
