Should state give away an acre in the ‘dacks? You decide
-
- September
- 24
|  Voters wil be asked to decide on Nov. 6 whether the state should swap one acre of land deemed forever wild  in the hamlet of Raquette Lake in the heart of the Adirondacks for 12 other acres that would be added to the forest preserve, where all development is prohibited.
   The hamlet needs the land for the water that lies underneath it – a reservoir it had been using hasn’t provided enough clean water for residents and they want state approval for a well already dug to supply water to residents.   The common-sense swap has sparked virtually no opposition. Yet it must be approved by voters statewide because no land in the three-million-acre Adirondacks forest preserve can be given away without amending the constitution. The vote is the last stage in the process – the Legislature has already approved it twice.   There’s no estimate on how much the vote will cost – polls in most of the state will be open that day anyway for local elections – but John Sheehan of the Adirondack Council thinks it will be money well spent.  “We really want the state to be careful about how it treats the forest preserve,’’ he said. Requiring a vote by the people before any land can be taken out of it assures that it will not be done for anything less than a very good reason, he said. |
This entry was posted
on Monday, September 24th, 2007 at 5:16 pm by Jay Gallagher.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Share and Enjoy: | 
Print This Post
| 
Email This Post
Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0. 
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 
This vote is totaly unnecessary because the Consitution already gives communities the authority to construction reservoirs and related facilities on Forest Preserve land as long as the total area affected is less than 3% of the total Forest Preserve. Only about 1% of the Forest Preserve has been affected by public water supply facilities to date so there is ample land available for the Raquette Lake water project.