The sign facing state Route 3 for the Saranac Lake Marina is seen here in March 2022. (Enterprise photo — Aaron Marbone)

SARANAC LAKE — A state Supreme Court judge has dismissed the lawsuit several green groups brought against the Saranac Lake Marina and Adirondack Park Agency over the marina’s plans to expand and install covered docks on Lower Saranac Lake.

But LS Marina’s project — which is already half-finished — is not in the clear yet. The green groups and a neighbor of the project who levied the lawsuit are appealing the judge’s dismissal of the case, sending it up to the Court of Appeals — the highest court in the state.

Green groups Adirondack Wild and Protect the Adirondacks!, as well as Thomas Jorling, a former commissioner of the state Department of Environmental Conservation who owns a home directly across the bay from a portion of the project, have sued the marina and the state Adirondack Park Agency. They say the expansion of the marina is too big and could impact the ecology of the lake it’s on. They also allege the APA has bypassed some of its own processes in approving this expansion.

The marina owners have defended this expansion, saying they’ve made a lot of changes to their original plans, and that they are being conscious of the environment. They could have built on former boathouse footprints, which were not in compliance with the modern law, without needing APA approval. But because they decided to build new docks, they opened themselves up to stricter environmental conditions being placed on the construction.

The judge said that the APA had discretionary rights to make the decisions it did.

These groups have been in and out of court over this project for more than a decade through numerous lawsuits.

Justice Martin Auffredou had dismissed several of the green groups’ “causes for action” in 2024. On Dec. 8, he dismissed the rest of the causes for action. These dismissals were made on the basis of moot points, a lack of timeliness in the filing of the lawsuit and jurisdictional discretion by the APA.

The green groups were already appealing last year’s dismissal, with oral arguments set to start next month. Now, they are attempting to consolidate their appeal with the decision the judge made earlier this month.

Matt Norfolk, a Lake Placid attorney representing the marina, said this appeal could take around a year to resolve.

After this appeal is decided, there is still potential for that decision to be further appealed, Norfolk said, but he added that it would be difficult for the Court of Appeals to take up such an appeal a second time.

“The Court of Appeals is akin to the U.S. Supreme Court, in that they’re selective on what type of cases that they will take,” he said.

Potentially, the Court of Appeals’ decision could be the final word on this project.

Marina co-owner Mike Damp plans to install roofs on 174 of the 277 total slips at the marina’s two sites to protect the boats of around 200 local Tri-Lakes families there.

Protect! Executive Director Claudia Braymer said this is a “significant expansion” to the marina.

She said the state Department of Environmental Conservation should do a carrying capacity study for the Saranac Chain of Lakes, which is required by its unit management plan. The state budget this year set aside $1 million for such a study. Braymer said it appears the DEC has no intentions to spend it. Protect! sued the state, suspecting that there is overuse on the lake, but this case was dismissed.

There are concerns about motorboats leaving pollutants in the water, the impact on wildlife and impacts on the “social capacity” — the safety and enjoyment concerns of other users of the water.

The APA granted the marina a permit in 2020 and the owners started some of the work. Jorling and the green groups sued, lost, and then won on appeal. In the time between when they lost and appealed, more work was done adding docks. The docks were added but covers were not. Jorling and the green groups sued again, bringing the lawsuit that was just dismissed.

The lawsuit requested the court to make the marina owners remove the docks that were installed.

Norfolk is confident the appellate court will uphold the lower court’s decision.

Braymer is confident they’ll win the appeal. Last time, the green groups lost in the supreme court and then won in the appellate court.

Earlier in the case, the judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the marina from installing any more docks or dock covers. This order vacates that injunction.

Braymer said a preliminary injunction is usually granted if the plaintiff has a likelihood of success in their claims. So the decision to dismiss the case earlier this month surprised them.

Now that the case will go to the appellate court, that court could issue another injunction. With it being winter right now, not much work can happen at the docks for a couple of months.

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The lawsuit

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The lawsuit alleges that the APA decision violated its own freshwater wetland law by authorizing the addition of covered docks at the marina’s Ampersand Bay annex site without requiring a wetlands permit.

The APA said the plans for that site minimize the impact on the wetlands there, and that it did not need to require permit because of that. The APA did require a wetlands variance for covered docks proposed at the Crescent Bay portion of the project. But the lawsuit also claims the APA did not have the right to issue this variance.

The APA found that granting the variance was better for the environment than rejecting it and having Damp build on the existing footprints, which would not require a variance.

“Granting the variance was more protective of the environment,” the APA said in court documents. “Granting the variance would not adversely affect the natural, scenic and open space resources of the Adirondack Park.”

The judge agreed.

The lawsuit also sought to have the new docks at the main marina site that were installed removed, saying they were not authorized. Norfolk said uncovered docks are exempt from shoreline setback restrictions. There are future plans to install covers, but they are currently uncovered.

The judge said the docks were installed in good faith with APA approval at the time. He said the harm that would be caused of removing the docks outweighs the harm that would be caused by leaving them.

He said since there was a period of time from when the docks were installed and when the lawsuit was filed, the point was moot.

The judge said the green groups were not timely in filing this portion of the case. But Braymer said the judge misconstrued what they argued. She said the lawsuit was not about the 2021 APA determination about a wetlands permit which allowed the dock installation, but the 2023 approval of the expansion without requiring a wetlands permit.

They cannot make new arguments in the appeal, but they can try to clarify what they’re asking for from the court, Bramer said.

Braymer said the crux of their case is that the APA initially required a wetlands permit for the expansion at both sites. It approved this permit in 2020, but the permit was overturned in 2023 because the courts found the APA “undervalued” the wetlands classification. When the project was brought to the APA again, the wetlands permit was not required again, essentially circumventing the process, Braymer said.

“When the applicant went back to the agency, mysteriously, they no longer needed a wetlands permit for basically the same exact project in the same exact wetlands,” Braymer said.

The judge said the green groups were trying to have the court force the APA to take jurisdiction over the project. The judge said the agency has discretion over jurisdiction and that groups cannot compel the APA to exercise jurisdiction.

The APA said the marina did not need a wetlands permit anymore because the impact to high-value wetlands at the annex was reduced without increasing wetlands impact at the main site.

The judge also said the APA’s decision to grant the annex expansion a variance was reasonable and based on evidence that the plans minimized environmental impacts.

Damp has said this would do significantly less harm to the wetlands than the wooden boathouses that were on the shore when he bought the marina in 2014.

When Damp bought the now-century-old marina, he said it was a “dump site.” The existing shoreline boathouses were falling into the lake and the toilets flushed into the water. It was an “eyesore and an environmental hazard.” He said he’s been improving it ever since, removing the old boathouses, renovating the sewage system and cleaning invasive milfoil out of the lake.

He could have built docks on the original footprints of preexisting “nonconforming” boathouses without APA approval, since the land they are on is classified as a hamlet — the most lenient APA category — but since Damp wanted to expand and replace the boathouses with new floating dock structures and increase the overall number of boat slips, the project needed the APA’s go-ahead.

The APA found that the marina expansion would have a more positive impact on the environment than rebuilding the preexisting “nonconforming” marina without APA review. The judge agreed in his spring ruling.

The APA gave the covered dock plans a green light in 2023.

There are four docks at the main marina site with a total combined 36,000 square feet. There are 177 existing slips at the main marina site. The project would cover 134 of these and leave 43 uncovered.

There are 114 total slips at the annex site which would have 40 covered and 74 uncovered. This was a 50% reduction in covered slips at the annex site since the developers’ last proposal, which had 80.