Memorandum of Support for S. 1145 – To Senator Kaminsky, regarding Conservation Design
Memorandum of Support for S.…
An Act to amend the executive law in relation to preserving ecological integrity, wildlife and open space in the Adirondack Park, sponsored by Senator Kaminsky, et.al.
David Gibson
Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve encourages passage of S. 1145 (same as A. 4074, which passed the Assembly in March, 2022) in the current session, important legislation to develop smartly in the Adirondack Park through the well-known and widely practiced principles of conservation subdivision design. The set of principles specified in this legislation ensure early and rigorous analysis of ecological systems and environmental conditions before large project applicants to the Adirondack Park Agency (APA) expend significant dollars in a site plan. The bill ensures that the largest residential subdivisions in the Adirondack Park are conceptually studied in a flexible, pre-application process that keeps the applicant's goals as well as ecological principles in mind.
By requiring a pre-application, conceptual review of the Park's few very large projects, the bill will better protect Adirondack forests, conserve natural resources, manage working forests, farms and open space recreation and develop the largest residential subdivisions at markedly reduced cost to the environment and to project infrastructure. The bill will also help to meet the state's greenhouse gas forest sequestration and storage targets by keeping private forests as forests in large, contiguous blocks.
APA continues to issue permits for sprawl development of private Adirondack lakes and forests which fragment ecosystems into multiple ownerships and which lack large, contiguous blocks of open space, limiting options for wildlife connectivity, forestry and open space recreation. The most recent example was the APA permit for 34 new homes at Woodward Lake in March 2021. Therefore, APA requires this new legislative direction to design future large-scale subdivisions in ways that are both ecologically smart, climate friendly, and economically sound. In 2019, the bill enjoyed diverse Adirondack stakeholder support.