The Great Sacandaga Lake is not, and cannot be, "forest preserve." It is an artificial lake surrounded predominantly by privately owned lands and public highways.
In forest preserve or wilderness areas, a pristine environment can only be attained by limiting the means of access. Stop at any roadside pulloff in the Adirondack Park and walk to the edge of the woods. You will see all manner of refuse, garbage, junk, litter and excrement. The abusers dump where it is convenient, cheap and they won't get caught. Combined with the noise from passing traffic, one could hardly call this a wilderness or forest preserve experience.
But hike any trail where there is no motorized access. Just past the trailhead, the pristine condition begins. Hikers want it and keep it that way. They carry out at least as much as they carry in. Hike in a little farther, and highway noise disappears. You are in wilderness.
There is a great analogy in this to the Great Sacandaga Lake. With free and open access to the lake by motorized watercraft, it is like a public highway and bears no resemblance to forest preserve. That it is surrounded by private property and highways and has its water level varied annually, which creates an artificial shoreline swath tempting to operators of ATVs and other off-road vehicles, makes it even less like forest preserve.
Use rights historically granted to permit holders have resulted in them preventing the "highway pulloff" effect from happening all over the shoreline. But the highway pulloff effect still exists in unpermitted shoreline areas, where only the Department of Environmental Conservation or Hudson River-Black River Regulating District board has historically had responsibility. And this effect is not just on Sand Island, the intensively used and notorious "sore spot," but also on miles of less-intensively used areas where, at or near the high water contour, flotsam and jetsam have been accumulating for years - junk, refuse and litter of seemingly endless description.
If the permit system were changed as proposed, this would not magically transform the GSL into forest preserve. Rather, figuratively, it would make it into a highway with pulloffs everywhere. It would clearly be an environmental travesty.
DOUGLAS E. SIEG
Gloversville