To the editor:

Former “executive deputy DEC commissioner” Marc Gerstman in his letter of June 21 takes the sad road of too many lawyers on the losing side of a badly presented case: He blames the New York Court of Appeals for the Department of Environmental Conservation’s longstanding mismanagement of the Adirondack Forest Preserve, leading up to its losing argument in this case. All one has to do is watch the oral arguments (available online at the court’s website) in order to see this for yourself. Gerstman should watch again. I especially refer him to the part where the state’s lawyer keeps on insisting that a 12-foot-wide snowmobile is similar to a foot trail, a proposition that I hope any person who has hiked or skied on both finds utterly ridiculous.

His legal reasoning, as set out in his letter, is nonsense: that the DEC consulted broadly with all interested parties, including, and this is revealing, “responsible” environmental organizations. Evidently, the environmental organizations who disagreed with the DEC’s plan to build miles of 12-foot-wide snowmobile roads were, by his personal definition, “not responsible” and therefore not seriously consulted. The DEC does not get to decide which citizens and their organizations are “responsible” and use this as a rationale to silence their views.

Nor does consultation, broad or narrow, provide an argument for the violation of Article 14 of the New York Constitution. The words “forever wild” have legal meaning as determined by the Court of Appeals, the final authority on the New York Constitution. The case is over, the DEC deservedly lost, and the court got it right, and now the DEC has to follow the law and rethink its Forest Preserve management.

If the DEC had consulted broadly with these environmental organizations, it would have heard a consistent view that these snowmobile roads violate Article 14 of the New York State Constitution. We had been saying this since 2000. But it did not do this. The state also has on its payroll hundreds of lawyers, but evidently either none who are expert on Article 14, or it did not consult them, either. It did consult with a segment of the public and local government that favors more motorized activity in the Forest Preserve, and through these consultations came up with its unconstitutional plan.

Given that the DEC was determined to build these trails in violation of Article 14, it was inevitable that some citizen or organization would file a lawsuit. It does not help democracy or the rule of law to use characterizations that differentiate “responsible” citizens from “irresponsible” citizens. This not only divides our country but it is harmful to a discourse about environmentalism, increased protections for our environment, climate change and the need for green energy. Protect the Adirondacks should be commended for bringing this case to the court, for the work of its lawyers in winning it, and for its long history of protecting the world-class Adirondack Park.

Sid Harring

Mayfield

P.S.: Harring is a member of the Board of Directors of Protect the Adirondacks, a forest owner and a retired law professor.