Two lawsuits involving visitor use and boater capacity may impact the future of the Upper Saranac watershed. In the first lawsuit, the owner of the Upper Saranac Lake Marina is suing the environmental nonprofit Adirondack Wild and environmental nonprofit news outlet Adirondack Explorer for libel and defamation after an advertisement from Adirondack Wild was placed in the Adirondack Explorer magazine calling for public comment opposing the marina’s planned expansion.
The full-page advertisement in the November-December edition of the bimonthly magazine referred to the marina expansion as “Off the Scale: Big Development on a Small Pond.” The ad claims the marina plans to replace existing 8,600 square feet of docks with 34,000 square feet of commercial marina, stating “that’s a four-fold increase” and is a “a public safety risk.”
The lawsuit alleges the organizations made inaccurate statements with intentional malice and that the Explorer has an obligation to review the ad before publication. The marina owners are seeking punitive damages, and demanding a retraction of the statements. The lawsuit states that no dock would extend more than 200 feet into the channel as the ad claimed. The four docks would extend 196 feet into the water, 188 feet, 172 feet, and 160 feet. The proposal is for 92 total boat slips, not the 93 as indicated in the ad. The suit also argues that the marina is not on a pond but rather an extension of Upper Saranac Lake. The proposed marina is on Fish Creek Pond, which is connected to Upper Saranac Lake by way of a 3/10th mile channel.
Click here to view the complaint.
Click here to view the motion to dismiss the complaint
In a second lawsuit, Protect the Adirondacks, another environmental group, is suing the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) to force a carrying capacity study of the Saranac Lake Chain of Lakes. The petition, filed in the state Supreme Court in Albany, contends the “carrying capacity study” is mandated by the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan. The Master Plan instructs NYSDEC to conduct “a comprehensive study of Adirondack lakes and ponds … to determine each water body’s capacity to withstand various uses.” Carrying capacity studies evaluate human influences on lakes and ponds and create a better understanding of the water body’s ability to withstand watercraft uses and boater traffic impacts.
Protect argues in the nearly five years since the Saranac Lake Use Management Plan was adopted, the state agency “has failed to undertake or complete the required carrying capacity study and has thus failed to perform the nondiscretionary duty.” In addition, the petition seeks a court order preventing the DEC and the Adirondack Park Agency “from issuing a permit or approval for any proposed project that will result in the docking, mooring or use of additional motorized watercraft in the Saranac Lakes complex pending completion of the carrying capacity study.”
Last year, Protect the Adirondacks sued the APA and LS Marina seeking to overturn a variance the agency had issued approving the marina’s expansion on Lower Saranac Lake in Franklin County. In an earlier Supreme Court ruling on the Lower Saranac Lake Marina, the court sent a clear message to the state that it has a responsibility to study a water body’s ability to sustain various uses, including motorized boats, calling the state’s failure to do so “wholly unexplained and, indeed, inexplicable.” The owner of the Lower Saranac Lake Marina is the same owner as the Upper Saranac Lake Marina.