The Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club has issued a call to send in comments to New York State’s Adirondack Park Agency opposing plans to make it easier to convert Adirondack rail corridors into trails.
The State Supreme Court in September 2017, ruled in favor of the railroad, preventing DEC from beginning the track removal. Now, the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) has proposed in a Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS) to amend the State Land Master Plan (SLMP) for the Adirondacks to redefine the "Travel Corridor " classification in such a way that will allow DEC to remove the tracks, essentially an end-run around the judge's ruling.
Letters are needed to the APA by May 7, calling on the APA to either rescind the DSEIS or to select Alternative 1: No Change, which would keep the tracks in place.
Thank you for taking the time to send in your comments and for all you do to protect New York's environment!
Background: The rail corridor runs from Utica, NY all the way to Lake Placid, NY. It is owned by New York State from a point near Remsen, NY going north. In 2016 New York State pushed through a plan to convert the last 34 miles of the line from Tupper Lake to Lake Placid into a multi-user trail. (This 2015 diary, although outdated in some details, describes the situation.)
The Adirondack Railway Preservation Society operates a seasonal tourist railroad on the corridor; they took New York State to Court — and won. (Disclosure — I currently serve ARPS as a volunteer with their planning group).
The state’s plan to convert the rails to trails were blocked because the state was trying some legal sleight of hand: they were going to call the trail a travel corridor even without rails — because that was the only way to let snowmobiles keep using it. (The corridor would have reverted to non-motorized uses otherwise.) The judge ruled it would violate the state’s own definition of a what a travel corridor is — along with violating historic preservation laws and ignoring some inconvenient title issues.
Since then, the corridor has been in limbo at the north end. While snowmobilers continue to use it during the winter months, the stations sit idle and the line is starting to deteriorate without the care the railroad used to provide. The state should have reverted to a 1996 plan which called for restoring the entire line to passenger service and building trails around it — but didn’t. It has since declined to appeal the judge’s decision.
Currently: The state’s latest plan? They couldn’t win in court so now they’re trying to change the rules of the game, as the Sierra Club notes above. They’re going to redefine what a travel corridor is to let them do what they want. This still won’t address the historic preservation issues (the corridor is on State and National Registers). It also doesn’t address title issues — take up the rails, and the land reverts to the original owners.
The statement the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter submitted to the Adirondack Park Agency is scathing. It points out how the APA skewed the comment process and ignores a number of environmental and economic issues. Take point two:
(2) Global Climate Change: In this era of increasingly intense impacts ofclimate change, the APA should not promote activities which will knowinglyincrease climate change agents. The DSEIS states the unifying theme of theAPSLMP is: "... the protection and preservation of the natural resources of thestate lands within the Park must be paramount...Human use and enjoymentof these lands should be permitted so long as the resources and their physicaland biological context ...are not degraded."
In contrast, the DSEIS states (p. 1): “The APSLMP's definition of Travel Corridor isbeing amended to define a railroad corridor as...either (1) for the operation ofrail cars, or (2) to serve as a rail trail. A rail trail is ....where the rails have beenremoved to accommodate modes of travel other than rail cars, includingsnowmobiles and bicycles...."
For the APA to meet its stated mandate to exercise responsible "protectionand preservation of the natural resources" of the Park, snowmobile use, withthe resultant increase in CO2 and hydrocarbon emissions, should not bepromoted by the APA by amending the APSLMP to allow for snowmobile usein the Travel Corridor.
This isn’t just a rail corridor off by itself. The southern end at Utica, NY shares a platform with regular Amtrak service on the Empire Corridor. It makes absolutely no sense to cut the heart of the Adirondacks off from the national passenger rail network, especially in the age of Climate Change, when we really need to rethink how we do transportation.
• You don’t have to belong to the Sierra Club to make a comment.
• You don’t have to live in New York State to comment.
• You just have to be someone who thinks we need to preserve rail corridors and wants to make a start on doing something about Climate Change.
The Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club has its comment here — you can refer to it for talking points.
PLEASE send your comment ASAP — the deadline is tomorrow, May 7, 2018. Send it to: SLMP_Comments@apa.ny.gov
Tell the APA to either rescind the DSEIS or to select Alternative 1: No Change.