By RY RIVARD, Politico 03/06/2023 10:00 AM EST
ADIRONDACK PARK AGENCY LOSES TWO — The Adirondack Park Agency, tasked with overseeing six million acres of New York state, suffered two significant court losses last week in lawsuits challenging separate decisions the agency took and stood by in spite of controversy and major opposition.
On Friday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Robert Muller ruled that the agency improperly approved the use of a chemical herbicide in Lake George. The APA, as the agency is known in the North Country, last year issued permits to allow the application of the chemical ProcellaCOR in two parts of the lake to go after Eurasian watermilfoil, a tricky weed. The judge found the agency acted arbitrarily and capriciously by not holding a public hearing on the issue.
“It was the second of two court decisions this week rebuking how the agency, charged with long-range planning and overseeing public and private development in the 6-million-acre park, conducts business,” the Adirondack Explorer’s Gwendolyn Craig wrote.
The other decision, issued Thursday, invalidated a permit the agency had approved to expand a marina at Lower Saranac Lake. That case pitted the former head of the state Department of Environmental Protection, Thomas Jorling, against current state officials and dredged up years of uncomfortable questions about whether the state has know-how and will to protect the Adirondacks.
“While the decision from the state Supreme Court Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department, called the state’s failure to conduct a carrying capacity study of the lake ‘inexplicable,’ the court ruled that that failure did not prevent APA from determining the project would not have an adverse impact on the park’s surrounding environment,” the Explorer’s Zachary Matson reported.
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