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A better idea for Pontiac Bay, Lake Flower and Saranac Lake

In case you missed it, the long-awaited application for the Lake Flower Resort arrived at the Adirondack Park Agency over the holidays, including a plea for a variance to roll back very reasonable shoreline setbacks. The arrival was noticed in the Dec. 23 edition of the Enterprise. And if the lawyers wanted to put you in mind of miracle birth, it bore closer resemblance to the mythical hour when the animals speak. What this 800-pound gorilla had to say was, “I’m not ready!”

Of the numerous legitimate objections to this project voiced over the three-and-a-half years since it first emerged (including illegal spot zoning, architectural incompatibility, size, parking …), the APA will be most concerned with the project’s impact on the environment.

Of greatest concern is how to keep stormwater and snowmelt runoff from inflicting any more damage to the already severely stressed ecology of Pontiac Bay and Lake Flower. Resort developers assert that it will be an improvement over what is there now. This is a very low bar to clear, given that the three motels currently occupying the site were built a generation before the APA was established.

LFR Engineers have come up with a stormwater management plan that is grossly inadequate. To deal with water that routinely pools along the Lake Flower Avenue side of the property during large storm events, they propose three underground collection tanks that will divert stormwater across the road to the village drainage system, which will carry it to the flooded intersection at River Street and Brandy Brook Avenue, where any water the village system can’t handle drains directly into Pontiac Bay. The engineer’s environmental philosophy in a nutshell: “off-site, out of mind.”

The developers’ most ambitious plan to deal with stormwater is to pave the parking lot — which will occupy a quarter of the property — with porous asphalt. Unfortunately, this technology requires at least twice the clearance from the groundwater table than the site’s geography permits. It also does nothing to filter out nitrogen and chloride and filters less than 40 percent of phosphorus, three major pollutants in stormwater runoff. The asphalt also has a record of failure when subject to the pressure of tightly turning vehicles, an inevitability in this constrained lot.

These environmental concerns don’t even address the cleanup of coal tar and other carcinogens from the lake bed of Pontiac Bay, scheduled to begin next year. For the hotel developers, this would be more of a public relations nightmare than an environmental issue. Seriously, who in their right mind would schedule the opening of a high-end spa resort overlooking an active, unsightly, smelly dredging operation? Mud bath, anyone?

It is time to give serious consideration to a viable alternative to the Lake Flower Resort:

Step 1. The APA should apply common sense to its environmental protection mission and deny the variance and general permit applications of the developers.

Step 2. The state of New York should take the $2 million economic development grant currently earmarked for the hotel and embark on a state-of-the-art cleanup of Brandy Brook and Pontiac Bay, and a permanent solution to flooding at the River Street-Lake Flower Avenue intersection. This would include:

A) The state Department of Environmental Conservation leasing the Lake Flower Inn as a well-screened (less conspicuous) alternative site for the dredging headquarters and sludge dewatering compound that would neither displace the Ice Palace in winter nor reduce boat launch overflow parking in summer, and

B) The state Department of Transportation burying stormwater attenuation tanks along Brandy Brook Avenue to retain and gradually disperse any and all stormwater that floods the intersection at River Street and pollutes the bay.

Step 3. After the engineering is complete and Pontiac Bay is clean, a consortium of land trusts, civic, environmental and economic development organizations should purchase the three motel properties (and purchase any rights held by LFR developers) and transform the nearly 3-acre site into the public beach and park that many in our community have long dreamed of.

A public beach at our marquee gateway, with ample parking and proper water drainage, would present visitors a panoramic view of lake, hills and village. It would also stand as proof that our village, which has a regrettable history of neglect and abuse of Lake Flower, has taken a new approach to its environmental protection.

Mark Wilson lives in Saranac Lake.

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