Lt 04 26 2014

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Editorial» To frack or not to frack?

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Saturday, April 26, 2014

GUBERNATORIAL HOPEFUL

Statewide effort seeks to bolster ailing fire depts

Congressional hopeful speaks with the VN

By Pete DeMola pete@denpubs.com

PAGE 3 PUBLISHER’S COLUMN

There is a lot to one’s chosen life vocation PAGE 4 OUTDOOR

Gubernatorial hopeful Rob Astorino (R) visited Lake Placid’s Herb Brooks Arena on Tuesday, April 15 as part a campaign swing through the region. While the Westchester County Executive criticized the state’s high taxes, the SAFE Act and Albany’s culture of corruption, he had nothing but kind words for the North Country. “This is such a beautiful part of the world, it’s stunning. I can’t wait to come back and go in the lakes — it’s beautiful,” he said. Photo by Shawn Ryan

Supreme Court ruling has no effect on local rails By Shawn Ryan shawn@denpubs.com

Fishing is beginning to heat up locally PAGE 14

LAKE PLACID Ñ The Supreme Court recently ruled in a Wyoming landowner rights case that property from a defunct rail line reverted back to the original land owner, thwarting a rails-to-trails effort proposed for that line. This ruling, however, will have no effect on local efforts to convert unused

tracks, such as the 90-mile stretch of abandoned rail corridor between Lake Placid and Old Forge, to recreational trails. Ò It has no effect on it at all,Ó said Tony Goodwin, Director of the Adirondack Recreational Trail Advocates. Ò The state owns the entire corridor in fee, and on top of that, since there was no Federal land in any of the original 13 colonies, because it was all Crown land which then became state land, there are no federal grants of Rights of Way in those states.Ó

The Wyoming case involved land which was federalized under the 1875 General Railroad Right of Way Act. The stretch of rail corridor in question in the North Country, which is part of a larger, 120 mile corridor from Remson, N.Y. to Lake Placid, was abandoned by New York Central Railroad in 1972. The state of New York bought the entire right of way prior to the 1980 Winter Olympics, CONTINUED ON PAGE 5

ELIZABETHTOWN Ñ Volunteer fire departments in the North Country are nearing a flashover and for many local agencies, there isnÕ t an extinguisher in sight. The main accelerants are manpower and recruitment. A generation of fighters are aging out of the profession and few are waiting in the wings to replace them. Other stressors are the same that curse other agencies across the region: anemic budgets, plummeting populations and an increase in state mandates. North Country departments have two additional strikes against them: Sparsely-populated areas make consolidation tricky and a paralyzed tax base makes it difficult to supplement their ranks with paid staffers. To combat the situation, several local departments will participate in RecruitNY this weekend, a statewide effort by the FiremenÕ s Association of the State of New York (FASNY) designed to recruit new blood by throwing open their department doors to showcase equipment, vehicles and otherwise engage the public and ignite an interest in civic involvement. Isaac Guenther, Second Lieutenant of the Elizabethtown Fire Department, said while itÕ s in the nature of volunteer departments to deal with an ebb and flow of resources, it becomes a problem when firefighters are faced CONTINUED ON PAGE 8

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