The sensible electrical route

Unlike many other Adirondack Park projects, one that will soon be brought to light, literally, has brought environmentalists and local officials together in an attempt to provide a service necessary to the safety and well-being of those in the Tri-Lakes while keeping in mind the natural resources in the area.

That project is the nearly 27-mile stretch of power lines currently being installed along state routes 3 and 56 west of Tupper Lake.

It’s hard to ignore the path being cut on the roadside and the new power poles being put up, which tower well over the old poles and the trees — and their falling limbs — making local residents less likely to experience the frequent outages that windy and/or winter weather have caused for years. The crews can be seen daily, hard at work installing the new poles and clearing trees in a path for the line.

While the scenery along the roadway is changing strikingly as the roadsides are cleared and poles are buried, it’s important to note that this project is a necessity — not that we need to preach this to anyone who has spent a long, cold night in below-zero temperatures in a home with no heat, lights or hot water.

The hurdle was that Route 56 runs through a section of the Raquette Boreal Wild Forest, part of the state Forest Preserve, where tree cutting and structures are generally not allowed. Sticking to this too strictly, state Adirondack Park Agency commissioners originally approved a much more invasive plan that would have sent the power line on a long detour through private woods around the state’s tract, forcibly buying that land by eminent domain. This plan would have taken more time dragging through the courts — one landowner vowed to sue — and been more expensive and more destructive to the backcountry. The fact that the APA approved it highlights a devotion to the letter of the law that governs the Forest Preserve at the expense of the spirit of the law, which was the conservation of Adirondacks’ wild places. Environmental groups agreed that it is much better for nature to cut a smaller section of state-owned, roadside woods than to carve a huge swath through a wild forest that’s now undivided.

Thankfully, the APA changed its decision on May 9, giving permission for National Grid and the New York Power Authority to run the power line all the way along Route 56, pending its formalization through a state constitutional amendment. NYPA (and, in 2012, National Grid) will take six acres of Forest Preserve, and in exchange, National Grid will give 10 acres of its land in St. Lawrence County to the Forest Preserve.

Keeping the power line on the roadway was clearly the best option, and the donation of land in exchange for keeping the route on target is fair play on National Grid’s part.