The APA approved a new ADA-accessible boat launch at Baldwin Park in Saranac Lake and a controversial 680-acre logging plan by Lyme Timber in Colton.
The Adirondack Park Agency approved two projects Thursday that touch the Tri-Lakes: an ADA-accessible boat launch in Saranac Lake, and a Lyme Timber logging plan in Colton that drew a fifteen-minute board debate and two dissenting votes.
The boat launch
The Village of Saranac Lake has spent years deciding what to do with Baldwin Park on Lake Flower. The plan approved Thursday would tear up the underused asphalt tennis courts, build a pavilion, and construct a canoe and kayak launch accessible to people with disabilities.
APA's Benjimin Amos described how it works: the launch "allows a person to launch or dock their vessel by pushing forward on the aluminum rails that extend from the rollers to the water."
Board member Art Lussi called the project thoughtful and environmentally responsible.
The logging plan
Lyme Timber Company owns more than a quarter-million acres in the Adirondacks, including over 16,000 acres across the St. Lawrence County towns of Colton and Piercefield. On roughly 680 acres of that tract — south of Sevey Corners — the company plans to harvest nearly all of the overstory damaged in the 1998 ice storm and turn it into pulp.
APA project review officer Aaron Ziemann presented the plan, showing maps with Route 3 running east to west, Tupper Lake to the east and Cranberry Lake to the west.
The board did not agree. Member Benita Law-Diao questioned the environmental impact, and the board debated for about fifteen minutes. Jerry Delaney, who represents the APA's Local Government Review Board but doesn't vote, defended the harvest: "You should see what happens to this clearcut in five years, when you can't walk through it. It's full of rabbits, it's full of ground birds, it's being used by deer and by moose."
When it came to a vote, Rush Holt and Law-Diao voted no. Everyone else voted yes.
The objection that came before the vote
Adirondack Wild submitted a letter to Ziemann opposing the project, focused on what the harvest plan doesn't contain. The group said the plan includes no natural resource survey — meaning, in their words, that state agencies and the public have "no baseline understanding of sensitive wildlife habitats and ecological communities."
The group also raised the land's status: the parcel sits within a Department of Environmental Conservation conservation easement near Massawepie Lake and the Grasse River Flow, and Adirondack Wild argued the intensive harvest may not comply with the easement's protective terms. The tract was previously recommended for inclusion in a proposed 185,000-acre boreal heritage reserve.