What Happens to the Loons and Deer? : At Adirondack Park, They Worry About the Development of Progress

The biggest thing to hit South Pond in the 97 years since George Kittle’s grandfather built his camp there was the Great Blowdown of 1950.

“It took three men three days to cut their way from the lake to the camp with chain saws,” Kittle recalled in a visit to the mossy old cabins.

The hemlocks have grown back tall around Kittle’s rustic camp, and South Pond is much the same as it has been for generations: a quiet wilderness lake welcoming loons, ospreys and occasional canoeists.

But that may soon change. Kittle and others fear that South Pond and the rest of the 6-million-acre Adirondack Park, the biggest wilderness area east of the Mississippi, are about to be altered as dramatically as they were when that windstorm roared through the mountain passes and flattened a forest.

This time, however, the scars will be permanent.

Condos Within Sight

Within a few years, canoeists may find condominiums clustered along favorite lakes and rivers, and hikers may look down from high peaks to see the roofs of second-home subdivisions.

“Millions of people will come to the Adirondacks in the next generations,” said Dick Beamish, a wilderness guide and spokesman for the Adirondack Council, a preservation group. “They will find something degraded, chopped up through the efforts of big developers, unless we act quickly to preserve the last of our natural legacy.”

Unlike other parks in the United States, which are publicly owned, the Adirondack Park is about 40% state forest and 60% private land.

The state land, called the Forest Preserve, is protected as “forever wild.” But 3.5 million acres of private land are interpersed with that, including more than 100 hamlets and villages. Year-round residents number 120,000; the population swells by 90,000 each summer.

Land values rose and development surged in the late 1960s, with construction of the Adirondack Northway, a superhighway linking New York City and Montreal.

Park Agency Created

By 1971, developers had proposed several 10,000-lot subdivisions in the Adirondack outback. The plans were scuttled in 1973 with creation of the Adirondack Park Agency, which controls development through some of the strictest zoning regulations in the nation.

Conservationists hailed the APA’s creation, but many locals denounced it as a blow to development in an economically depressed region, where the jobless rate is sometimes several times the state average.

Now it appears that the APA might lack the power to prevent profound changes in the Adirondack landscape.

“We are seeing a surge in development,” said Robert Glennon, counsel and acting director of the APA. “It’s not just hotels in the hamlets; the backcountry is being subdivided as well.”

Developers, now familiar with the complex APA law, have learned to tailor their plans to slip through loopholes, Glennon said, especially along the park’s coveted, crystalline lakes.

Getting Around Plan

For example, more than half the park’s private land lies within the strictest APA zone, requiring nearly 43 acres for each building. Yet Beamish points out that if a developer leaves enough vacant land in the woods, hundreds of houses could be clustered along a lakefront.

“It has become apparent that the APA isn’t enough to protect the park,” Beamish said. “We could still have half a million new houses in the Adirondacks with that plan.”

Permit applications increased by more than one-third in 1987, Glennon said. The 204 applications received in the first four months of this year include plans for townhouses, condominiums, housing developments, motels, marinas and sewage plants. A dozen projects would include 30 to 150 housing units each.

Much of the development is aimed at villages where APA powers are limited and zoning is left to local governments. Proposals include a 250-unit hotel and convention complex with 100 condos in Schroon Lake; 184 townhouses in Speculator, where the year-round population is 375, and a 95-unit development in Inlet, a hamlet of 200.

Focus on Remote Areas

Although the hamlets are seeing the most concentrated growth, preservationists are more concerned about remote sections of the Adirondacks, where timber companies are starting to put tens of thousands of forested acres on the market.

“That’s where the battle really has to be fought, if the character of the park is to be maintained,” said George Davis, a leading voice in the preservation movement. “And that’s where the big subdividers are going.”

The Adirondack Council has sharply criticized the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s sluggishness in buying Adirondack land. Of $250 million allocated in a 1986 bond act for land purchases around the state, about $2 million has been spent, for one 14,000-acre tract. In that time, a single developer bought 13,000 acres to subdivide, Glennon said.

Robert Bathrick, director of lands and forests for the department, countered that purchase time had been “cut in half by streamlining the process,” but added: “We’ll never be in the same position as private developers.”

The Adirondack Council has identified about 300,000 acres it says the state should buy or acquire easements on to consolidate fragmented wilderness areas and preserve panoramic vistas.

Alternatives Sought

Some preservationists, fearing that the state cannot compete with developers, are looking for other ways to save the Adirondacks.

“I never thought I’d see the day when I’d go talk to a developer,” Davis said. “But now I’ve begun to think that’s the way we’ll save the Adirondack Park--along with getting the state to buy more land.”

Davis, as APA staff ecologist and planning director, helped draft the zoning plan and later worked as program director for the Adirondack Council. Now he is an independent consultant for the Council and its spinoff organization, the Adirondack Land Trust, a nonprofit group that preserves private land by holding conservation easements.

Instead of trying to stop development, Davis is trying to get developers to tailor their projects to harmonize with the environment. He is pleased by the response--especially from Patten Corp., whose aggressive subdividing angered wilderness advocates in New England and New York’s Catskill Mountains a few years ago.

“We were ready to do battle when Patten came up here two years ago,” Davis said. “But the fellow who heads their Adirondack office, Dan Christmas, is working in a way that takes into account the fact that this is a park. He’s talking to environmental groups and backing off or making changes in sensitive areas.”

Easement Given

Last fall, Patten gave the Adirondack Land Trust a conservation easement protecting 322 acres along the Oswegatchie River, a popular canoe route. Although the APA map would allow 38 homes, Patten agreed to restrict future development to 19 homes.

Kittle has turned to the Adirondack Council in hope of persuading a developer on South Pond to make similar concessions.

The mile-long lake is surrounded by state forest and a few private tracts, including one house and three camps.

Kittle, a retired schoolteacher who lives in Connecticut, has been coming to South Pond since he was a child. The camp his grandfather built in 1891 is a collection of one-room cabins with no electricity, no plumbing, no phone, no road. Kittle paddles out there in a canoe just big enough for him and his dog to spend a quiet week or two.

Now, he is afraid that South Pond won’t be so quiet anymore. The Finch-Pruyn Paper Co. recently won town board approval for a subdivision with 14 150-foot lots clustered across the lake from Kittle’s camp.

The Adirondack Council wrote to Finch-Pruyn, hoping to persuade the company to revise its plans.

Developer Called Key

“Usually, we’re on the side of preserving, not developing,” Beamish said. “But in this case, we feel the salvation of that lake will be if the developer does it right.”

R. J. Carota, president of Finch-Pruyn, said the company is considering the suggestions.

“The zoning law would let us put in 14 lots, but the Adirondack Council says five lots, set back further with trees left along the lakefront, would be better,” Carota said. “That seems reasonable to us. As it stands, we have no immediate plans to proceed with any development.”

“I’m not opposed to development,” said Kittle, gazing over the lake as a misty rain obscured the opposite shore. “I think it’s inevitable. But it has to be done in a sensitive way.

“We have to ask, what’s going to happen to the loons and the osprey, the deer and the beaver when all these houses are built? Are we going to destroy the very thing that we’ve worked so hard to preserve?”