Updated 3:55 PM
ALBANY (AP) -- The agency that regulates New York's Adirondack Park has imposed new restrictions on rebuilding shoreline camps and cottages that environmentalists say are overdue, but others say will devalue homes and hurt business.
In upscale waterfront enclaves, properties often sell for more than a $1 million, sometimes with former seasonal camps rebuilt as year-round second homes.
"There doesn't seem to be any consideration for the economic fact of this," said state Sen. Betty Little, criticizing the change. "If you had a property that was there before 1973 you didn't have to go to the APA unless you were expanding it toward the water."
As of Dec. 31, owners will have to get the Adirondack Park Agency's permission for any work, and there's a cost to that, Little said, adding the action seems like more than a clarification of the rules, which is how it was described by agency staff.
The agency board, voting 9-1 on Friday, approved the regulations covering older structures inside the 50- to 100-foot shoreline setbacks along lakes, ponds, rivers and navigable streams.
Under grandfather provisions, owners had been able to rebuild and expand without a variance in any direction except toward the water. Owners can still replace existing structures without getting that approval first. Agency spokesman Keith McKeever said the APA plans to define minor additions that will still be allowed without variances.
There are 11,101 lakes and ponds in the 6 million acre Adirondacks Park, 5,000 of them covering more than an acre, McKeever said. There are also 30,000 miles of rivers and streams, and the setback requirements affect any water body considered navigable by a boat or canoe, he said.
The setbacks are 50 feet in hamlets and moderate intensity areas, 75 feet in low-intensity use areas, and 100 feet in so-called resource management areas. More than half of the park is privately owned, though thousands of those acres are covered by conservation easements prohibiting development.
David Gibson, executive director of the Association for the Protection of the Adirondacks, said the old, more permissive regulations were at odds with state law. Municipal planning and zoning officials who were under pressure to approve projects because of the money involved will probably appreciate the APA's role, he said.
"Pre-1973 structures should not be simply allowed to expand willy nilly without being reviewed by the agency," Gibson said.
The park agency last week also adopted revisions affecting wetland subdivision, land division along roads and definitions of floor space and hunting and fishing cabins. The APA began considering revisions a decade ago, began drafting the changes in 2003 and held hearings this year.
Michael Washburn, head of the Residents Committee to Protect the Adirondacks, said his group took no formal position on the waterfront setback change, though he believes the new restrictions are prudent and timely and will serve the park's economy over the long term.
"There's going to be an argument that says development in the park is already unnecessarily restricted," Washburn said. "The impacts from heavy shoreline development affect everyone. They affect adjacent shoreline owners and their values. They affect water quality and the public interest. They affect environmental health and wetlands protections."
"The specialness of the park, the fact that it's different from every place else on the planet, brings value," he said. "The notion that we should be just like everyplace else takes that value away. It's absurd."
(Copyright ©2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
