As we explained in our case summary, the question in this case was whether the State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) rationally approved a plan to use recently acquired land in the Adirondack Park to construct a snowmobile corridor. A divided Court (DiFiore, J.) held that DEC’s plan was rational and affirmed the Third Department’s decision to that effect.
The case involved two separate sources of legal authority: the Wild, Scenic and Recreational Rivers System Act (“the Rivers Act”); and the Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan (“the Master Plan”). Petitioners claimed that these sources of authority prohibited DEC from adopting a plan that would allow the seasonal use of snowmobiles and automobiles in a newly-acquired tract of the Adirondack Park.
The majority disagreed. The Rivers Act permitted DEC’s plan under a provision allowing “existing land uses” so long as they were not “altered or expanded.” There was record support, the majority found, for DEC’s conclusion that the proposed uses here would not alter or expand existing snowmobile or automobile uses in the newly-acquired land. The majority also rejected petitioners’ contention that the existing-use restriction in the Rivers Act was superseded by more restrictive provisions in the Master Plan. The River Act was not superseded, the majority held, because that Act gave DEC “exclusive jurisdiction” over lands like this, as did the Master Plan; and what was more, the administrative agency that drafted the Master Plan concluded that its provisions did not conflict with the Rivers Act.
Judge Fahey dissented, disagreeing with the majority’s conclusion that the proposed use would not “expand” existing uses. The prior use was not public; the proposed use would be, which Judge Fahey considered an obvious expansion. And there was no record evidence that the existing uses would not become greater under DEC’s proposal. Pointing to this absence of evidence, DEC had called the possibility of expansion speculative. But this got things backwards, Judge Fahey thought: DEC had to prove that there would be no expanded use, not merely point to an absence of evidence about a possible expansion.
Judge Wilson also dissented in an opinion Judge Rivera joined. For one, Judge Wilson thought that the Master Plan expressly required DEC to remove roads and snowmobile paths from land it acquired for inclusion in the Park. Whatever existing use authorization resided elsewhere did not cancel out this specific removal directive. Moreover, Judge Wilson disagreed with the majority’s conclusion that the Master Plan did not supersede the Rivers Act. True, the Rivers Act gave DEC exclusive jurisdiction over lands like these. But as Judge Wilson saw it, jurisdiction over land was separate from the substantive rules about what DEC could do with that land. And so while the Rivers Act gave DEC jurisdiction, the Master Plan supplied the substantive requirement that it remove roads and snowmobile paths from newly-acquired lands. Lastly, even if the Rivers Act governed possible uses of the land at issue rather than the Master Plan, Judge Wilson was unconvinced that the Rivers Act’s existing-use restriction applied. In his reading, that provision applied to private land within the Park, not land owned by the State.
Return to the case page for Matter of Adirondack Wild v. New York State Adirondack Park Agency.