It was the second of two court decisions this week rebuking how the agency, charged with long-range planning and overseeing public and private development in the 6-million-acre park, conducts business. An appellate court ruling Thursday declared the agency wrongly applied its wetlands regulations.
APA commissioners, in a rare split vote of 6-4, granted the Lake George Park Commission a permit to test an herbicide in two eastern bays to treat invasive Eurasian watermilfoil last year. The Lake George Association filed a lawsuit against the APA, the park commission and the state Department of Environmental Conservation after the permits were granted.
The association had raised a number of environmental and public health concerns about the herbicide treatment, a synthetic plant hormone called ProcellaCOR EC already used in lakes across New York and the Northeast. Lake George Waterkeeper Chris Navitsky, the town of Hague and Helena G. Rice, a lakeside property owner, also joined the suit.
The LGA and other environmental organizations were stunned by the agency’s refusal to hold a public hearing, too. The Adirondack Council, a nonprofit advocacy group, wrote a so-called friend of the court brief contending that a public hearing should have been held.
In a decision issued Friday, Warren County Justice Robert Muller called APA’s issuance of the permits without holding a hearing “arbitrary and capricious,” and scolded staff for a “one-sided” presentation to commissioners about the herbicide.
“Indeed, of the 110-page Power Point presentation, only 9 pages were devoted to the 325 public comments in opposition—with these comments minimized during the presentation itself,” Muller wrote.
Keith McKeever, spokesman for the APA, said the agency “is reviewing the decision and does not have any further comment at this…
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