Harvey wrote
The only mines I know of in Siamese Ponds Wilderness are no longer active - Hooper and Humphrey. I don't think the Gore Mountain mine is classified as wilderness.
The Ruby Mountain mine is near but outside the wilderness. To the environment itself that is probably meaningless but that distinction, in my mind, is significant. Ruby is in an "industrial zone" (not sure what it's called).
Both the Gore Mtn mine and Ruby Mtn mine are on
private land (owned by Barton Mines Corporation), so they are not and never have been part of the Forest Preserve. The Gore mine is directly adjacent to the Siamese Ponds Wilderness and contains the headwaters of the East Branch of the Sacandaga. Bartons moved from Gore to Ruby around 1985 when it became economically unfeasible to remove the overburden required to continue mining that site. In other words, the easily accessible garnet deposits had been mined. Ruby may not be directly adjacent to the Siamese Ponds WIlderness, but it's close. So it's somewhat similar to the NYCO situation. It'd be like Barton Mines asking if they could swap some of their acreage on Gore (they own approx 1500 acres surrounding the inactive mine there) for Forest Preserve acreage in the Siamese Ponds Wilderness so that they could expand the Ruby Mountain operation.
Harvey wrote
Re your post further up the page: I am confused about ADK's position. It looks like DEC and APA are pushing for this, ADK is ok with it if... what? I think of DEC and APA as being pretty serious about their mission.
Jeff, appreciate any light you can shed on the nuance.
No doubt DEC and APA are serious about their mission. Some people think that DEC and APA are bowing to political pressure to green-light NYCO's expansion into Lot 8 in order demonstrate some sort of common ground, business friendly cooperation between the state, private business and environmental groups. Some people think that the Adirondack Mtn Club threw Article XIV under the bus in order to curry favor with the Cuomo administration, and that ADK's recent objection to DEC's approvals is a form of backpedaling in the wake of backlash from their membership.
I'm not sure what I think of all that ^^, but I do know that it's a complicated issue and that the state had better proceed slowly, carefully, deliberately. Regrettably, the proposition left open some questions as to exactly how the land exchange would be implemented, so we are covering new ground. I doubt that NYCO has any genuine interest other than making a profit, so that's generally a recipe for disaster for the Forest Preserve and a very good reason to be skeptical. What I do know is that it's too bad that ADK supported Prop 5 in the first place, and it's too bad that Prop 5 passed - you just shouldn't mess with Article XIV, especially not in the case of Prop 5.
I've barely touched on all the nuances to this issue. You can probably get a quick handle on the current situation by reviewing the excellent NYCO coverage on Adirondack Almanack:
link here.
Locked
