Organizing Successfully Against the Sacandaga Reservoir Regulating District
Guy Poulin
One day, while sitting in the parking lot where I picked up my newspaper, I just happened to be reading the paper. I read where the Hudson River Black River Regulating District was going to hold a meeting on the 2nd of October, stating that a new access permit fee schedule for the Sacandaga would be approved, and that a copy of it could be found at Northville Field Office.
So what I did is I went to the Northville Field Office and,
sure enough, there was this piece of paper there sealed in plastic
that showed the new permit fees. And, being a little naïve,
I looked, let me see, I’ve got 210 feet. I am going to go
to $1,000 a year for the use of the shoreline around the Great
Sacandaga in front of my house, from $92 a year. You also have
to realize that the Great Sacandaga Lake is one of the only lakes
in the United States that I am aware of where you actually pay
to be situated next to its shores.
Needless to say, going around Thursday night telling people that
your fee was going to increase from $72 a year to $700 a year
did not go over very well. I was called a liar. Oh, incidentally,
I requested a copy of the schedule. They said I had to FOIL it.
State of New York. Okay? So that night I talked to my sister-in-law.
My brother-in-law kicked me out of his house. He said I was a
liar. The State cannot do that. So the next night I talked to
my sister-in-law. Guy, that can’t be true, she said. They
can’t raise it like that. So what I did was just continue
trying to talk to people, and that did not work. I tend to be
somewhat of a practical joker at times, which made things a little
bit worse.
But the next morning my sister-in-law goes to work. She is secretary
to the clerk of the board in Fulton, County, New York, and she
tells the clerk that the permit fees are jumping by as much as
1,300 percent. He calls up the River Regulating District and confirms
this. Well, I need a copy of that faxed to me because this is
going to have a detrimental effect upon the taxes that these people
pay around the lake, also, he says. No, you are going to have
to FOIL it. He immediately put in a phone call to the governor’s
office and even that didn’t work. But, in the meantime, the
director called and said that you can find it on the Internet.
My sister-in-law calls me immediately and says, you can find it
on the Internet under hrbrrd. So I looked it up and ran off their
bylaws. In the meantime, I made 200 copies of the schedule and
started passing it around to the people, and the people were alarmed.
At the October meeting, they closed the door when the capacity
was 26 people and there were 80 of us there. A public hearing
was scheduled at Northville Central School, which has an auditorium
that will hold 650 people. They closed the door 20 minutes before
the meeting was scheduled to open, with 800 people ready to lynch
them. You must also remember that the Hudson River Black River
Regulating District is one of those public benefit authorities.
Everybody is appointed by the governor. Everybody serves at his
discretion, and I am certain you have heard about what happened
with NYRA (1), what has happened with SPAC
(2), and, of course, what has happened
with the Canal Authority (3).
So we presented our case. I had done a lot of research. In
the bylaws, it states that the Hudson River Regulating District
was actually set up by the New York State Legislature in 1915.
We just celebrated our seventy-fifth anniversary on the lake,
of closing the dam at Conklingville. Financing the river district
is based on those benefiting most from river regulation. The owners
of some 37 down-stream properties in Saratoga, Warren, Washington,
Rensselaer, and Albany counties, at which the power of moving
water can be directly utilized, agreed to share 95.34 percent
of the cost of acquiring Sacandaga Valley land and building the
necessary facilities. The remainder was shared among the cities
of Albany, Watervliet, Troy, and Rensselaer, and the village of
Green Island, in recognition of the flood protection that they
would realize. No state or federal tax dollars were used to build
the reservoir. Approximately $4.9 million was paid to acquire
all of this land, build the bridges, build the dam. (Today the
cost of the new Batchellerville Bridge that is going to have to
go in is scheduled to be $34 million—to put a bridge in.)
Moreover, the same property owners and municipalities obligated
themselves to share in perpetuity all the operating and maintenance
costs of the Regulating Districts not recovered by other district
revenues.
There is also a segment in there that none of the revenue derived
from the permit system is used to operate the Hudson River Black
River Regulating District. Permit fees are used only to help offset
the costs of running the permit system itself. Well, the permit
fees at that point in time are already paying the cost to run
the permit system, and more. I also got hold of their audit that
showed that permit fees were budgeted at $400,000, and they collected
$436,000, which means they made a profit of $36,000. They had
scheduled that the permit system was going to cost $2.9 million.
And they were charging things off to us that were against their
own budget.
This is still going on. We did get the permit fees brought back,
but it is still going on. Very, very shortly thereafter the APA
(4) steps in and says that we are going
to limit dock size to a 160 square feet. Try to put a 30-foot
boat on a 40 by 4-foot dock and try to protect it in the wind.
Now we are fighting historical preservation. They are trying to
get us to before we can move a rock on the land between us and
the water, we have to have a historical preservation team come
in at our cost to move that rock.
To finish, a little story. The Archangel Michael had been looking
around Heaven for six days to find God, and on the seventh day
he found God relaxing in a cloud. He said, what have you been
doing for the last six days? God pointed down and pointed to Earth,
and said, “I created Earth.” And, Michael inquired “Well,
what is the big deal there?” God said, “Well, it is
a place of wide diversity and extremes.” “Oh,”
said Michael.
Michael pointed to this dark spot, and he asked, “What’s that?” “That’s New York City, a city of extreme wealth and extreme poverty,” answered God. “Oh. How come the Earth is white at the top and the bottom and green in the middle?” asked Michael. “Well, here is the diversity again, said God. We have very hot areas and very cold areas.” Well, what is this beautiful green spot right here?” Michael asked. God said, “That’s the Adirondacks, and it is a place of extremely intelligent people. They will not make a great deal of money, but they will be world leaders and they will have very diverse ideas.” Michael asked “But, God, where is the diversity?” God replied, ”You should see the idiots I put in Albany.”
Notes:
(1) NYRA - New York Racing Authority
(2) SPAC - Saratoga Performing Arts Council
(3) Canal Authority - New York State Canal Authority
(4) APA - Adirondack Park Agency
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