Do You See Waste or Gravel?
Sadly, I have to report that the Adirondack Park Agency has thwarted the removal of the clogged mouth of Foster Brook. The Adirondack Park Agency is sticking to an interpretation that is in conflict with the Department of Environmental Conservation and common sense. While the DEC has issued the permits to start dredging, there is no place to put the dredged material. As one of the owners of the parcel where the material was going to be put, I wanted to tell you first hand what is transpiring and why we have had to pull out of the project.
I was informed by the Lake George Association in the middle of the summer that the DEC had issued the permit to dredge Foster Brook. I posted that news here.
We have always wanted this project to proceed and, in this regard, we offered to allow the dredged material to be put in our gravel pit to save the LGA money. If they couldn’t use our pit, the LGA was looking at a substantial cost increase in moving the material over the mountain. They approached the APA and asked if a permit was necessary for the dredged material to be put in our gravel pit.
The APA conducted an on-site inspection during late July/early August. The APA sent two staff members to see the site where the material was going to be placed. During that meeting, one staff member asserted that a permit would be needed because the dredged material, being removed from Foster Brook, was “waste”. We later learned that he was instructed to make this interpretation by a supervisor.
Both the LGA representative and myself thought this interpretation was wrong. The DEC had previously tested the material and found it to be “clean fill”. We went ahead and applied for the permit in good faith, but I also wrote a letter to the APA which clearly indicated we did not accept their terminology and we did not consent to it being called “waste”. I said, in no uncertain terms, if the APA wanted to continue calling the material waste, we could not go ahead and let our property be used to place the dredged material.
I copied this letter to the DEC and the Governor’s office because both the APA and the DEC are executive agencies of the Governor’s office. On August 21st, the DEC called and told me our interpretation was correct and that the APA was in error to call the material “waste”. The DEC official was quite clear that, if gravel was defined as “waste”, almost every driveway throughout the Adirondacks would now have “waste” on it. The DEC official further told me that it was the DEC’s position that an APA permit wasn’t needed in order to put the dredged material in our gravel pit.
We repeatedly asked to see a draft permit from the APA during the week leading up to Labor Day. Only today did we receive a draft permit which attempts to assert jurisdiction under Section 810(d)(16) which applys to waste disposal areas. In addition, the draft permit tries to assert other conditions which we cannot agree to. In my opinion, this has been deliberately done, by some radical environmentalists at the APA, with the knowledge that we would not accept these conditions and that the project would not proceed. The most radical elements of the environmental movement see this delta as a wetland being created and do not care that private property is being impacted by flooding. Also remember that the DEC permit requires that the dredging be done by Ocrober 1st, so any delay is a full fledged effort to stop this project from going forward.
I am very disappointed that, after numerous years of work by many people, our good faith offer to allow the material to be put in our gravel pit has been met by one of the most outlandish interpretations ever made by the APA.
An interpretation such as this, which contradicts another state agency, has most likely been made in the Governor’s office. Either the Governor has specifically allowed this interpretation to be made or he is simply allowing the Adirondack Park Agency to run his administration. If you would like to call or email the Governor’s office directly you can contact him here. You can ask to speak to his secretary, Mr. Lawrence Schwartz.
Unless the Governor intervenes and corrects this interpretation or another site can be found to put the dredged material, the Foster Brook dredging will not take place this year.