Eco-Feudalism in the Adiron

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Eco-feudalism in the Adirondacks: the ability of Adirondackresidents to use their own property is at the whim of anappointed commission entirely unaccountable to the people.

Title Annotation: War on the East

Author: Grigg, Will iam NormanArticle Type: Cover Story

Geographic Code: 1USA

Date: Aug 9, 2004

Words: 2618

Publication: The New American

ISSN: 0885-6540

In August 1978, 19-year-old Tim Jones bought an acre of land near the Raquette River in New York's

Adirondack Park. Four previous generations of Tim's family had owned property along River Road inAltamont, and in August 1991 Tim obtained a permit from the town to begin building a small single-familydwelling.

Tim was working on his cabin on April 21 of the following year when he was visited by Ed Talbot, arepresentative of the Adirondack Park Agency (APA). Claiming that Tim's property was part of a"jurisdictional wetland," Talbot ordered him to cease construction and remove the building. Tim pointed outthat the lot he had purchased in 1978 was part of a pre-existing subdivision and was thus exempt from theAPA's jurisdiction under the 1973 act creating the agency.

Talbot returned later that day with a formal cease-and-desist order. In June 1992, the APA went to court insearch of an injunction against Jones, and asked the court to order him to remove his cabin. Determined todefend his claim, Jones enlisted the aid of friends and legal counsel to guide him through thelabyrinthine details of the APA's regulatory system--only to discover that the agency could redefine its

jurisdiction at will and was determined to make an example of him for daring to defy its edicts. Thus begana protracted struggle between Tim Jones and the APA that continues to this day.

The agency demanded that he either obtain an APA permit, which he could receive only through a lengthyand expensive process, or challenge the agency through its own "enforcement process," which amounts tomuch the same thing. "The APA has tried to bully me and break me financially," recalls Jones. "Initially,they wanted me fined $500 a day until the building was torn down." Curiously some of Tim's neighborshave been granted "non-jurisdictional letters" by the APA, including one with adjoining property.

"We have been through four Attorney Generals, two Governors ... and tens of thousands of dollars," wroteJones in a May 30 letter to New York Governor George Pataki. "This is not counting the lost job

opportunities I have suffered, or the problems it created in my twenty-year marriage that ended up indivorce, or the health and stress related problems, or the threats I have received, or the lies, slander, anddefamation of character towards me, or the ability to enjoy our property with my sons and family."

"It's been an incredible nightmare," Jones told THE NEW AMERICAN. "All we wanted to do was to build asmall cabin on land we legally own. We complied with all of the local laws, and my family has a long recordin the area as responsible stewards of the land. But all along the APA has tried to drive us off our property.And when we went public, the APA decided to make an example of me and my family. In fact, the APA'sacting counsel, Barbara Rottier, admitted as much in a recorded radio interview."

All of this anguish has ensued from Jones' efforts to retain an 18' by 24' cabin that he describes as being

eudalism in the Adirondacks: the ability of Adirondack residents to u... http://www.thefreelibrary.com/_/print/PrintArticle.aspx?id=1

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"about the size of a porch on one of the Rockefeller condominiums." The vast Rockefeller complex, severalthousand acres in size, is located quite near Tim's embattled single-acre property. Despite the APA'seagerness to expel small property owners like Tim in the name of "wetlands preservation," the agencyenthusiastically granted the Rockefellers permission to build an estate right on the banks of a "wild andscenic river."

This juxtaposition is ironically appropriate, since it was a Rockefeller--then-Governor Nelson--who createdthe APA in 1973. In the intervening decades, notes activist Carol LaGrasse of the Property RightsFoundation of America, the agency has become "a worldwide model for environmental regimentation." The

park itself has been designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization aspart of a "Biosphere Reserve." It has also been targeted for absorption into the UN-approved WildlandsProject, which envisions the "re-wilding" of roughly half the surface area of North America, therebytransforming it into a vast eco-preserve.

Advent of the APA

Adirondack State Park is three times larger than Yellowstone National Park, and its land area exceeds thatof nearby Massachusetts. The "blue line" boundary delineating the park surrounds some six million acreswithin 9,375 square miles of territory. Forty percent of the land is owned outright by the State of New Yorkand is divided between "wilderness"--reserved for low-impact recreation, such as hiking and camping--and"wild forest"--where some motorized activities are permitted.

Since 1973, the nominally private land composing the rest of the park's territory has been managed by theAPA, a state government bureau that grew out of a 1968 "Temporary Study Commission" created by NewYork Governor Nelson Rockefeller. The APA unleashed its land-grab manifesto, Preliminary Private LandUse and Development Plan for the Adirondack Park, two days before Christmas in 1972. The park's 107mayors and town supervisors, already distracted by holiday concerns, were given only 10-12 working daysto read, digest and comment on the voluminous and largely impenetrable report, which required each of thetowns and villages to submit a growth plan.

Similar difficulties confronted park residents, who were permitted to present their concerns in publichearings held in early 1973. When the APA Act went into effect in August 1973, the concerns of localleaders and residents had little effect on the Land Use and Development Plan, through which the agency

has imposed thousands of zoning regulations governing practically every conceivable use of "private"property in the region.

"More than 50 percent of the privately owned land has been zoned one home per 43 acres," noted APAcritic (and one-time Sierra Club activist) Anthony D'Elia in his book The Adirondack Rebellion. "This hasdestroyed land values without compensation from the state." And those who choose to develop theirproperties soon learn that "for every conceivable use of [their] property, the APA has come up with arestriction," notes reporter Anthony W. Fanning. As a "general rule," private property owners in theAdirondacks are forbidden to develop or subdivide their land "in a land use area not governed by anapproved local land use program, without first obtaining an agency permit."

Tim Jones, who has family roots in the Adirondacks going back four generations, typifies many others who

have been told by the APA that the private land they own is suddenly state-controlled property. "Whereveryou go, you'll find places where real people have lived since colonial days," comments Adirondack residentFred Monroe. "Go down a side street, and you'll find tombstones in churchyards that date back to ThomasJefferson's presidency."

When APA officials travel the side streets and back roads of the park, they're not simply taking in the rusticsights. "The APA travels the back roads on the lookout for even a new back porch a family might startputting up without the long, drawn-out agency review process that costs many times more for lawyers thanthe porch," explains Carol LaGrasse. The ability of Adirondack residents to use their own property is thusentirely at the whims of an eco-bureaucracy headed by a 14-member appointed commission--and entirelyunaccountable to the people.


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The "Abolish People Association"

The APA describes its mandate as one of "balanc[ing] environmental protection with economicdevelopment, to strike a balance between diverse interests that are the essential ingredients of the park."The true objectives behind this benign-sounding rhetoric were laid out, with stunning frankness, in aconfidential report compiled by George Davis, who at the time was "chief planner" for the APA (and whowent on to become executive director for the national Wilderness Society). Davis's report was circulatedamong APA commissioners, one of whom anonymously sent a copy to Anthony D'Elia. The document

"consisted of an attempt at a series of arguments to show that there were only two choices in 'achievingAPA objectives,'" recalled D'Elia. The first option was "The purchase of all privately-owned land in the Park";the second, "The use of laws, rules and regulations to achieve the same objective."

The APA goes beyond enforcing the law; it imposes its whims as if they had the force of law. This processwas described in a 1992 address to the New York State Bar Association by former APA commissionerRobert F. Flacke, who has become a critic of the agency.

"The Adirondack Park Agency ... is administered by staff and lawyers who have visions that go far beyondthe 'rule of law,'" stated Flacke. "They want to create law, selecting what facts to present and by carefullycrafting decisions, hope that an appeal will generate what the legislature did not: a result personallysatisfactory to them."

"Let me be specific," continued Flacke. "The Adirondack Park Agency has not promulgated one single newrule or regulation in ten years. It has not revised the development handbook since 1976. Yet, countless new'policies' have been created and implemented by staff and the Legal Affairs Committee.... There is no waythe public can any longer rely upon the word of law, or even the old regulations." The result, he concluded,was a regime of "regulatory law ... administered as a goal to achieve a more restrictive result than thatwhich the legislature had enacted and the Governor had signed."

Directing that strategy is Barbara Rottier, APA's acting counsel. Rottier sits on the board of directors of NewYork Rivers United, the state affiliate of the radical American Rivers, Inc. (ARI). Funded by lavish donationsfrom tax-exempt foundations, ARI is part of the Northern Forest Alliance, organized by the LauranceRockefeller Foundation with the goal of nationalizing at least 26 million acres of private land.

While efforts to seize those lands through direct federal designation have encountered resistance, notes theCenter for Defense of Free Enterprise, "conservation easements [have become] their main focus,permanently hampering use of private property. Only government or its land trust surrogates [such as theNature Conservancy] will buy such land, ultimately producing the same result: nationalization of ruralprivate lands."

Once again, APA-connected officials have been quite candid about those objectives, at least when they'reconvinced their victims aren't listening. In 1990, George Davis, an eco-activist deeply involved with the APA,traveled to Russia's Lake Baikal to set up a land-use planning system. Upon his return to the U.S., Davisfavorably compared the docility of Siberian peasants to the stubbornness of rural Americans. "Here we areused to people having conniptions over their land," Davis commented in a November 18, 1990 Glens

Falls Post Star interview. "But over there, they don't mind the land-use regulations because they are just[now] getting their own land."

Similarly telling comments were offered by Gordon Davis (no relation), one of the APA's founders, after timespent working on land-use planning in Tibet on behalf of Communist China. Gordon Davis had been sent todevelop regulations for the Wolong Nature Preserve near the Tibetan Plateau, which--like theAdirondacks--is a UN Biosphere Reserve. To comply with UN-dictated, government-enforced regulations,some of the 4,000 Tibetans living in the region would have to be forcibly relocated from lands their familieshad owned and worked for hundreds of years. Referring to "resistance to government intervention" on thepart of the targeted Tibetans, Gordon Davis pointedly observed: "The problem is similar to that in theAdirondacks."


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Given such casual endorsements of "rural cleansing," it's not surprising that Adirondack residents havecome to refer to the APA as the "Abolish People Agency."

The Wildlands Nexus

As mentioned above, Adirondack Park is a UN-designated Biosphere Reserve--a "core area" for thepurposes of the UN-aligned Wildlands Project. A result of a collaboration between the UN EnvironmentProgram and radical, foundation-funded environmental groups, the Wildlands Project would carve up

America's land into a network of wilderness reserves, "buffer zones," and wildlife corridors which wouldeventually cover the entire hemisphere. Dave Foreman, a co-architect of the Wildlands design and founderof the eco-terrorist group "Earth First!" has written that the scheme "is a bold attempt to grope our way backto October 1492"--that is, to eliminate our industrial civilization entirely.

Wildlands activists, states Foreman, intend to "tie the North American continent into a single BiodiversityPreserve.... " "Our vision is simple," states the organization's mission statement: "[W]e live for the day whenGrizzlies in Chihuahua have an unbroken connection to Grizzlies in Alaska; when Gray Wolf populationsare continuous from New Mexico to Greenland; when vast unbroken forests and flowing plains again thriveand support pre-Columbian populations of plants and animals; when humans dwell with respect, harmony,and affection for the land.... "

To accomplish this design, Foreman explained, local Wildlands affiliates must "identify existing protectedareas" such as federal and state wilderness areas, national parks, wildlife refuges, and other areas of "corewilderness." Once such core areas have been identified, eco-activists then demand the creation of "bufferzones" around the core areas, and the creation of "wildlife corridors" to link them together. Wildlandsco-architect Reed Noss points out that in both the core areas and buffer zones, "the collective needs ofnon-human species must take precedence over the needs and desires of humans."

Those humans unfortunate enough to own land near the core areas, or whose property is transected bywildlife corridors, will have to be evicted from their property --unless you happen to be a privileged memberof the Power Elite, such as the Rockefeller family. Foreman urges his allies to "look for gaps between wildlands or public lands. Such private lands often will be important areas for acquisition by public agencies orby private groups like the Nature Conservancy."

This is exactly what has been happening in the Adirondacks under the APA. APA commissioner and legalcounsel Barbara Rottier, as previously mentioned, sits on the board of Wildlands affiliate American Rivers,Inc. Fellow commissioner Katherine Osborn Roberts left a post at the Open Spaces Institute (OSI), a landtrust created by the Natural Resources Defense Council. OSI, in keeping with Foreman's Wildlandsformula, has been actively acquiring land in the Adirondacks. The same is true of the Hudson HighlandsLand Trust, which was created with generous support from Laurance Rockefeller--a key financial angel formany Wildlands-connected eco-radical groups.

Wildlands activists admit that their scheme will take a long time--perhaps centuries--to unfold. "Wildernessrecovery must start now but continue indefinitely--expanding wilderness until the matrix, not just the nexus,is wild," writes John Davis, editor of the project's journal Wild Earth. "Does [this] mean that Wild Earth and

the Wildlands Project advocate the end of industrial civilization? Most assuredly. Everything civilized mustgo.... "

Property rights are the foundation of the civilized order Wildlands radicals seek to overthrow. The resultwould not be the restoration of some prelapsarian natural paradise, but rather the imposition of a form ofeco-collectivist feudalism. That future is prefigured in the case of Tim Jones--an industrious, law-abidingman of modest means being driven off his land by the same forces who helped the Rockefellers set up theirriverside estate.

"It's been said that those of us who live in Adirondack Park have lost our rights as Americans," Jonescommented to THE NEW AMERICAN. "In fact, about a decade ago [former New York Governor] Mario


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Cuomo actually said that giving up our rights was the price we'd have to pay for choosing to live here. Butwhat's happening here is happening all across our country. Even if we were willing to leave, chances arethe same thing would happen to us wherever we went--unless Americans are finally willing to act to put astop to this land grab and restore our rights."

COPYRIGHT 2004 American Opinion Publishing, Inc.

Copyright 2004, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.


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Eco-Feudalism in the Adiron