2. Adirondack Park Agency
(Latest update 2001)
P. O. Box 99, Route 86
Ray Brook, NY 12977
Telephone: (518) 891-4050
Fax: (518) 891-3938
Web site: www.northnet.org/adirondackparkagency
Key Personnel (1999)
Richard H. Lefebvre, Chairman
Daniel T. Fitts, Executive Director
Charles Fox, Chief Counsel (resigned Mar. 2001, not yet replaced
Apr. 2001)
Barbara Rottier, Assistant Counsel
John S. Banta, Director of Planning
Edward J. Hood, Assistant Planning (Regulatory Revision Process)
Raymond P. Curran, Supervisor, Natural Resource Analysis
William J. Curran, Director of Regulatory Programs
Mark Sengenberger, Assist. Dir. of Regulatory Programs
Sandra Bureau, Dir. Interpretive Programs (Paul Smiths)
Membership
(Not Applicable-See Board of Directors)
Finances (1999)
Budget: $3,556,800
Coalition Involvements
“Although a state regulatory agency, the APA is strongly influenced by the Adirondack Council and other environmental groups. A minor agency scandal exemplifies this point. While covering an APA meeting, a reporter accidentally discovered that the agency’s fax machine was programmed with numbers for the Adirondack Council and other environmental organizations. There were no numbers from any Adirondack or local government organizations programmed.” -(First edition of this report)
The Adirondack Park Institute, Inc.
Linda Bennett, Exec. Dir., Box 256, Newcomb, NY 12852
(518) 582-2022
E-mail: api@netheaven.com
“The Adirondack Park Institute, Inc., is a New York State
not-for-profit 501(c)(3) charitable organization founded in 1989
by a statewide constituency of private citizens interested in
raising money to provide environmentally focused educational curriculum
and resources to our communities. Thus, a relationship between
the APA, Inc. and the Adirondack park Visitor Interpretive Centers
located in Paul Smiths and Newcomb, New York, was formed to facilitate
that goal.” - APA 1999 annual report, p. 26.
VIC funding has come from:
Newcomb Lions Club
Town of Newcomb
International paper Company Foundation
Stewart’s Shops
SEFA/United Way
Simmons Foundation
Adirondack Community Trust
New York State Electric and Gas Corporation
Organizational Description and Goals
The Adirondack Park Agency was created in 1971 to develop long-range land use plans for both the public and the private lands within the Blue Line. However, contrary to widespread opinion, the final APA Act was not passed in 1971. After much controversy, revisions to the lengthy law were passed in May 1973, with the very long amendments creating the actual land-use control system. The 1973 law also included the concessions won from Gov. Nelson Rockefeller by Adirondack Assemblyman and Majority Whip Glenn Harris. This means that there was an interim period during which the plans were being finalized and the final legislation developed. Thus the complete APA Act with its elaborate controls over land was actually passed in May 1973, and grandfathering of pre-existing parcels and land uses is dated from August 1, 1973.
The State Land Master Plan was adopted by the Agency and first signed by the Governor in 1972. The following year, in 1973, the Land Use and Development Plan pertaining to the park’s private lands was adopted by the legislature.
The APA administers the provisions of the Adirondack Park Agency Act, including the Land Use and Development Plan, and the regulations derived from it. The APA also administers two other state laws within the Blue Line: the New York State Wild, Scenic and Recreational Rivers System Act (1972) and the New York State Freshwater Wetlands Act (1975), which regulates land within the Blue Line more strictly than land outside.
Board of Directors (Updated 2002)
Appointed Agency Members*
Richard H. Lefebvre, Chairman (Resignation announced Nov. 2002.)
James C. Frenette (Appointed Active Chairman Nov. 2002)
William H. Kissel
Frank Mezzano
Deanna Rehm *
Katherine O. Roberts
James T. Townsend
Cecil Wray
*(Until early 2002, one vacancy existed: one in-Park seat, formerly held by Greg Campbell, who resigned 1/15/98.)
Ex-Officio Members
Erin M. Crotty, Commissioner of Environmental Conservation (DEC),
replaced John Cahill, 2001
Alexander F. Treadwell, Secretary of State (DOS)
Charles A. Gargano, Commissioner of Economic Development (DED),
George M. Kazanjian designee, as of Mar. 2001
Designees
Sandra LeBarron, DEC
Stuart Buchanan, DEC
Richard Hoffman, DOS
Gregory Caito, DEC
Diane Burman, DED
Publications
“Adirondack Park Land Use and Development Map and State
Land Map - 1999”
“Adirondack Park Agency - Rules and Regulations - Filed October
25, 1982”
“Adirondack Park Agency Act - As Printed March 31, 1991”
“Summary of Adirondack Park Agency Authority Over Land Use
and Development and Subdivision” (fold-out poster 10/95)
Citizen’s Guide to Adirondack Forestry
Citizen’s Guide to Adirondack Rivers and Roads
Citizen’s Guide to Community Planning
Citizen’s Guide to Adirondack Lakes
Citizen’s Guide to Adirondack Wetlands
Citizen’s Guide to the Adirondack Forest Preserve
“The Adirondack Park” (pamphlet)
Web Site
The APA web site demonstrates the power of GIS (Geographic
Information Systems. According to the Hamilton County News,
Mar. 27, 2001: “Executive Director Daniel Fitts asked the
agency’s computer mapping and web programmer, John Barge,
to demonstrate the new ‘Explore the Adirondacks’ interactive
mapping application.
“Barge displayed the web site on-screen and showed that visitors
to the site can zoom in and around the park, viewing detailed
maps of state and private lands, roads, water and municipal areas.”
Comments (rev. 2000)
“The Adirondack Park Agency notoriously exceeds its statutory powers in order to make it impossible for applicants to obtain permits. In 1992, I analyzed the permit and enforcement conditions that the APA was illegally imposing since approximately 1990 and came to the conclusion that the conditions fit 18 categories of restrictions which included key aspects of the controversial Berle/Cuomo 1990 Commission report, The Adirondack Park in The Twenty-First Century and the Governor’s program bill largely drafted by they-APA Director Glennon to implement the report. Unfortunately the economic damage to the Adirondacks and the denial of due process to permit applicants by imposing rules beyond APA legal powers has continued under the new Administration.” -(LaGrasse, The Property Owner’s Experience, 1998, p. 13) (publication list)
Below is a summary version of this 1998 update I did of the APA’s abuses of its power:
Master Plan
The most prominent APA imposition of a master plan recently is
that on the Whitney application. One of the two paramount grounds
by which Whitney Industries’ application to develop a 15,000-acre
subdivision was obstructed by the APA in 1997 was that the application
was required to include a master plan for their 30,000 acres of
property outside the proposed project. The project would have
brought important new local economic activity while preserving
parcels of adequate acreage for economic timber harvest.
Cumulative Impact and Segmentation
The master plan requirement is, of course, an implementation of
the extra-legal concept of cumulative impact and segmentation
review. Ironically, the APA violates the SEQRA requirement that
a project not be segmented. (See below.)
Blackmail Land Sales
The notorious recent example is the coercion of Whitney Industries
to both negotiate with The Nature Conservancy and sell their 15,000
acres to the State in 1997 as a result of applying to the APA
and facing a hostile agency and insurmountable application hurdles.
An overlooked clause of the APA law is supposed to protect against
this abuse. The coerced acquisition of land from applicants as
a result of the appearance of the applicant before the APA is
specifically prohibited in the APA law.
“Nothing in this article shall be construed to empower the
agency to acquire any interest in real property by purchase or
condemnation. No right of first refusal or first option to purchase
in favor of the agency, the department of environmental conservation
or any other state agency shall in any way be created by this
article...” (APA law Sec. 819(4))
Excessive requirements for local land-use plans and related
matters
In 1997, the APA kept whittling down, and finally rejected a simple
map revision request from the Town of Lake George, which had been
greatly reduced in scope to fully meet each of the APA’s
repeated requests, even though the Town had an APA-approved land
use plan. The Town had exhausted its hamlet space and wanted a
revision to the APA-approved land-use plan to allow suitable expansion
of development on adjacent land.
One of the few towns contemplating the attempt to obtain an APA-approved
land-use plan in recent years, Tupper Lake dropped the process
after the APA began to impose even tighter rules than the APA
law requires. The Town of Ticonderoga had the same reaction.
In February 1998, at the controversial Long Lake Planning Board
meeting about passing a town zoning plan which hosted three APA
representatives and two Department of State representatives, APA
Deputy Director Karyn Richards make a number of carefully couched
arguments toward making the town plan stricter than APA law requires.
At one point, she said that a local zoning plan which was more
restrictive than the APA would prevent development that did not
meet the character of the community.
“Forever Wild” highway strips
Since the APA power to regulate the aesthetics of single residences
along highways was specifically removed as a result of Assemblyman
Glen Harris’s negotiations with Governor Nelson Rockefeller
when the APA law passed in 1973, it was blatantly illegal when
the APA began routinely imposing the “forever wild”
strips in the early 1990’s to shield houses from view in
accordance with the Twenty-First Century Commission and Glennon
bill recommendations. The APA imposition requiring of “forever
wild” highway strips is now routine, and, unless a miracle
occurs, our hard-fought efforts to defeat it in the early ‘nineties
are now part of history.
A recent example is that the APA summoned the free wheeling concept
of “critical environmental area” to require that Dave
Doner’s trailer (Keeseville) be set back with 300 feet of
undeveloped area between it and the highway. This APA imposition
was particularly egregious because the Doner trailer was by law
non-jurisdictional, according to Howard Aubin.
Screening new and/or existing structures from highway view
Single family dwelling permits now often specify screening according
to the Adirondack Park Agency Reporter (January 1998, p.
3).
Requiring future APA permission for any wetlands disturbance
The status of such controversial boilerplate conditions of the
early 1990’s which are stricter than the statutory wetlands
protections has never been dealt with by the APA Commission according
to the Adirondack Park Agency Reporter (January 1998, p.
1).
Clustering
The unwritten policy known as the “Butler Lake Guidelines,”
developed “to site buildings back from and invisible from
a waterbody, in a ‘cluster’ design concept, and for
much lower density than the maximum allowable in the particular
land use classification,” persists at the APA and deserves
formal reconsideration, according to the Adirondack Park Agency
Reporter (January 1998, p. 1).
Hunting and fishing camp jurisdiction
The APA uses wetlands and other stretches of vaguely defined jurisdiction
to acquire control over exempt under-500 sq. ft. hunting camps.
Rather than adhere to the statutory floor area criteria, it draws
ton the existence of electric generators, water and waste water
service as critical items, an evaluation of the yearly occupancy
duration, or whether family groups use the structure, and counts
lofts and porches toward floor area.
“As to Moose Ponds Club, in early 1996 it vanished from the
list of pending projects, and its present status in unknown,”
according to the Adirondack Park Agency Reporter (December
1996, p. 4).
Operation and maintenance requirements
The APA continues to expand illegal Twenty-First Commission-style
controls of operation and maintenance.
According to Adirondack Echoes (Winter 1997, p. 14), “The
Ausable River Campsite wants to relocate some of their camper
sites away from the river and out of the flood plain...”
The APA “refuses to allow relocation of the sites and also
refuses to allow this business to operate more than 120 days out
of the year...Even the Dept. of Health agrees and allows campsites
to remain open for 180 days...”
In 1997 the owner of the Campisi bed and breakfast agreed not
to hire any employees, according to the Adirondack Park Agency
Reporter (January 1998, p. 6).
The APA is now routinely imposing hours of operation and noise
level restrictions in permits for business applications, according
to Susan Allen, the editor and publisher of the Adirondack
Park Agency Reporter.
Frivolous aesthetic requirements
The APA has continued to enforce arbitrary aesthetic choices of
no objective merit and no environmental value.
When the APA illegally asserted jurisdiction over Dave Doner,
it specified a darker shade for the color of his trailer, according
to Howard Aubin.
At the present time, the APA staff routinely imposes color restrictions
on structures. According to the Adirondack Park Agency Reporter
(January 1998, p. 3), the “staff recently stated it now
asks for manufacturers’ color samples to be submitted for
approval.”
Encumbrances on the ultimate number of structures
Encumbrances are still accomplished by influencing an applicant
to sign a permit as a contract, as in the example Kraig Saunders
challenged at the time my lawsuit was brought.
Conrad and Carol Russell submitted an application in 1994 for
a bed and breakfast in an APA Low Intensity-zoned area of the
Town of Russia. Their intention was that the bed and breakfast,
an addition to their house, would be on a parcel of 8.58 acres
(far more than the APA statutory minimum and in keeping with the
Town zoning), but the APA required that the bed and breakfast
be considered as a structure in 180 acres, their then-existing
entire parcel. This prevented the Russells from proceeding with
the application because they had intended to further subdivide
the parcel.
Broad conditions on vegetative cutting
Conrad and Carol Russell’s bed and breakfast application
in the Town of Russia was before the APA for at least two years
beginning in 1994. The Russells were required to submit a vegetative
cutting plan for 200 ft. from the Hinkley Reservoir, although
the APA did not have the power to require this setback. The Russells
considered it to be very undesirable for their project to have
the cutting of vegetation so greatly restricted on the reservoir
side.
Single family dwelling permits now often specify the “footprint,”
or “building envelope.” Permit conditions prevent such
things as paths to shorelines or have requirements to share roads
(Adirondack Park Agency Reporter, January 1998, p. 3).
Conditions based on land being of “global significance,”
or being essential plant or animal “habitat,” or necessary
to protect “biodiversity,” “land bridges,”
or “whole ecosystems.”
The APA obstruction of the Whitney Industries application to subdivide
“great camps” on a 15,000-acre portion of their estate
was based on these 1990 Twenty-First Century Commission concepts,
which are not part of the APA law. The APA’s alter ego, the
Adirondack Council, raved that the Whitney’s application
would break up the great “Bob Marshall Wilderness” and
disrupt the unique ecosystem of the vast area.
The APA’s checklist now involves a panoply of biodiversity
considerations, partly because the agency’s advanced computer
mapping has made such evaluation more efficient. The APA always
considers whether a location involves one of the Adirondack Council’s
“2020 biodiversity sites.”
Imposing conditions based on non-existent land-use category
“back country”
The APA has grown comfortable in abrogating the statutory minimum
lot sizes in its illegally instituted Twenty-First Century “back
country” zone comprised of the Rural Use and Resource Management
zones. Instead, for large parcels, the APA uses artificial constructs
such as “environmental sensitivity,” “significance,”
“uniqueness,” “wetlands,” and “irreplaceability”
to withdraw use of land from the owner and transfer it to government
control.
Conditions based generally on Twenty-First Century Commission
concepts and resultant mood
In the eight years since I brought the lawsuit about the APA’s
illegally imposed permit conditions, the thinking put into writing
by the Twenty-First Century Commission has become more the norm
by environmental regulators. Thus, there is a comfort zone of
illegality where the biological survey and master plan requirements
could be imposed on the Whitneys and where the Whitneys could
somehow end up negotiating with The Nature Conservancy and the
DEC for the not-profit/State acquisition of their land.
Major Additional Present-day APA Impositions of Illegal Conditions
Endless information requests
At the March 1998 APA meeting, the Local Government Review Board
representative Joseph Rota pointed out that there should be a
limitation on Additional Information Requests (AIR’s) by
the APA for new information. Associate Counsel Barbara Rottier
advised the commissioners:
“The statute, and I believe, the regulations, provide no
limitation, we have the right to ask for information sufficient
to determine the project complete. We try our damnedest to ask
for as much as we think we’ll need. When you get information
you learn things about the project ant it can generate questions
you wouldn’t have known about before.” (Adirondack
Park Agency Reporter, March 1998, p. 2)
Staff barring the door to the board of commissioners
The full commission used to have a lead role to develop declaratory
rulings, but now the staff prepares these with committee members.
The staff also brings cases to the Attorney General for prosecution
without hearing by the board of Commissioners. In addition, the
everyday lengthy staff process, the tailoring of permit applications
by staff (with repetitious oddball permit features that applicants
would never have dreamed up) and the endless information and revision
requirements in effect stop the ability to complete an APA application
and have it approved or denied by the Commissioners.]
Perpetual APA control over completed projects
Discussion over the Spencer dock on Lake Champlain Narrows at
the February 1998 APA meeting brought out a common permit condition
allowing perpetual site investigations.
“Rota (executive director of APA Local Government Review
Board) suggested that a condition regarding site investigation
be limited to one year after project completion: ‘The whole
intent is to make sure it’s done correctly, it shouldn’t
be open-ended.’ Jarvis (APA Project Review Officer Richard
Jarvis): ‘Permits get recorded and may to a subsequent owner.
One of the concerns is after it’s constructed it remains
in compliance, so there can’t be a time limit. The specific
language is directly out of our current regulations.’ Rota:
‘Forever?’ Jarvis ‘Yes.’ Rota: ‘The APA
would be making examinations on every single project that comes
through forever, there is no way we could do that.’ Jarvis:
‘That’s staff’s current dilemma. As time goes on,
we have that much more to keep track of. We don’t take a
bunch of old permits and run compliance checks, unfortunately.
As time goes on, we have that much more to keep track of. We don’t
take a bunch of old permits and run compliance checks, unfortunately.
If a pro looking at a current project sees something different
from what he recalled from ten years ago, he may call the applicant.
Usually it’s the public calling up.’”
Maintaining a mentality of discretionary power
At the APA’s 1997 regulatory revision hearing at Colonie,
I urged that a particular agency power (of setting a time frame
for completion) under discussion be defined beneficially to the
applicant. Counsel James Marrin replied that the agency had to
retain its “discretionary” power. The mentality to keep
discretionary power was apparent also in the proposal to add the
requirement for a land survey by a licensed surveyor with the
APA keeping the prerogative to beneficially waive the requirement
if it chooses to.
Requiring or advising applicants to work with land conservancies
This APA abuse of requiring selected environmental contractors
continues. In 1998, Howard Aubin told me that a recent APA letter
to an applicant for non-jurisdiction advised the applicant tow
work with The Nature Conservancy to develop the project in an
environmentally sound manner. At the July 1997 meeting of the
Local Government Review Board, the APA spokesman announced that
the agency had discontinued its [unofficial] practice of requiring
donations to nonprofit organizations as a prerequisite for project
approval. This extortion is rumored to continue. No Attorney General
prosecutions have ever been pursued.
Using APA authority to push private land into the State
Government ownership (update 2002)
Upon the announcement of Chairman Richard Lefebvre’s retirement,
the press reported that one of the accomplishments under his tenure
was the State acquisition of the Whitney parcel and other large
tracts of land (Paul Grondahl, “Savoring what he helped protect,”
Times Union, Albany, N.Y., December 16, 2002, p. B2). However,
the APA Act has a clause prohibiting the agency from using its
powers to acquire land for state land acquisition.
Imposing shoreline setbacks and spacings stricter than those
in APA law
As a high priority, the APA has continued to increase restrictions
on shoreline land. George Kapusinsky fought to the Appellate Division
because the APA made him double access footage and shoreline footage
to force his small subdivision away from the lake, according to
Howard Aubin. Other cases where the APA was overzealous in protecting
shoreline were the Chaplinski family, Conrad and Carol Russell,
Butler Lakes, Whitney, and the Jim Morris projects.
New projects prohibiting use of underwater lands
The APA and DEC agreed to disagree about the jurisdiction over
“deep water wetlands,” after an exchange of memoranda
which are inaccessible to FOIL. The APA uses a “summer low”
to determine its jurisdiction over two meter deep water, taking
wetlands further out than DEC’s “mean high water.”
In a far-reaching policy change under the Pataki Administration,
underwater utility lines were prohibited from crossing Adirondack
lakes.
Excessive detail, micromanaging of project design
The APA’s attitude is that it can manage every aspect of
a project as though the agency, not the private property owner,
has title to the land.
The impositions of management of the applicant’s property
range from the extreme of the total takeover of all uninvolved
land to the finest detail of meddling. During the Whitney project
review, the staff suggested that Whitneys find a better spot for
their 40 camps on the other 30,000 acres of land they own.
At one APA meeting, a commissioner objected to the permit condition
permanently setting the color of the building. The staff denied
that the stipulation was by the APA, saying that it was the applicant’s
proposal. Counsel James Marrin said that they didn’t have
the right to change a permit, according to Susan Allen.
APA staff designing permit applications
The example cited above is typical. Another was in 1994 that Conrad
Russell applied for a project o n 8.58 acres, but the project
application notice sent to neighbors was for a project on 180
acres.
Failure to simplify permit process
APA permits have failed to get shorter and less detailed under
the Pataki Administration.
Requiring pre-approval by other agencies
Without statutory authority, the APA takes the liberty of deeming
applications incomplete if the applicant has not completed applications
to other agencies.
Use of enforcement or “wetlands” to acquire jurisdiction
for uses which are non-jurisdictional by statute
In an enforcement settlement offer to Chris McGill for his Wilmington
property, the APA required that he reapply for a permit for any
accessory use, although accessory uses are non-jurisdictional
by statute, according to Howard Aubin.
Stretching the APA’s authority to acquire jurisdiction
over major projects which are exempt.
The APA’s declaring jurisdiction over Wal-Mart’s Lake
Placid proposal because the elevation of some pavement was so
low that the entire construction (deemed the “structure”)
stretched over 40 ft. was a recent example
Neighbor compliance powers
The APA is now adding a permit clause giving neighbors the power
of enforcement.
Use of snitches for enforcement, failure to identify accusers
The APA was one of the early agencies to rely on grudges for enforcement.
Current Regulatory Reform Process is too long drawn out and burdensome.
During spring 2000, the APA presented for public comment the
formal revised regulations for Part I of Phase I of its regulatory
revision process, which began in 1997. The APA is violating SEQRA
by segmenting the revision process, making it incomprehensible
and hopelessly burdensome for all but a select few to comment.
Areas of revision during this phase include procedures for review
of projects, preliminary consultations and conceptual review,
permit application requirements generally, renewal of permits,
appeals and requests for reconsideration, subdivisions (counting
lots), subdivisions (gift, devise or inheritance), subdivisions
(preexisting subdivision), cooperative agreements.
Important problems as well as illegalities with the specific proposed
revisions have been formally documented in writing by the Blue
Line Council, the Property Rights Foundation and others, and these
comments are readily available.
In addition, overlapping the Part I, Phase I revisions, the APA
has begun discussions on definitions, where important comments
from the Blue Line Council are available.
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