Anyone who has ever been to North Creek — Gore Mountain skiers know it well — can’t help but be impressed by the quaint little town nestled in the scenic eastern Adirondacks beside the upper stretches of the Hudson River.
It’s certainly not a place to store junk.
That’s what Iowa Pacific Holdings LLC wants to do. The Chicago-based railroad, which owns the Saratoga and North Creek Railroad, said last week that it wants to use a portion of the line it leases to store junked, decaying railroad cars.
Iowa Pacific tried to create its own Adirondack junkyard once before. In 2015, the company proposed storing hundreds of worn-out oil train cars on the tracks between North Creek in Warren County and Tahawus in Essex County. The Adirondack Council, a privately funded not-for-profit organization whose mission is to ensure the ecological integrity and wild character of the Park, hired counsel at the time to submit legal materials as to why the proposal was not exempt from state and/or local regulation.
The governor and county officials later intervened and that proposal was subsequently withdrawn.
The same thing needs to happen now.
“The scenic beauty of the Adirondack Forest Preserve and the success of the Adirondack Park as a tourism destination are threatened by this outrageous proposal,” said Council Executive Director William C. Janeway. “The governor has invested many millions of dollars into promoting the park as a world-class wilderness experience for visitors, and as a place where pure waters will be protected. Dumping hundreds of worn-our rail cars here would degrade the park’s beauty and could lead to water pollution in the Hudson River.”
This junk belongs in a scrapyard, not in the pristine Adirondack Park. Write and register your opposition to this idea. It’s a bad one.
OPPOSE PLAN
Write and voice your opposition to a plan by a Chicago-based rail company to store junk rail cars in the Adirondacks, near North Creek in Warren County.
– Warren County Board of Supervisors, Municipal Center, 1340 State Rt. 9, Lake George, NY 12845; find email at: http://www.warrencountyny.gov/contact.php
– The Honorable Andrew M. Cuomo, Governor, NYS State Capitol Building, Albany, NY 12224; find email at: http://www.governor.ny.gov/content/governor-contact-form
PenneyVanderbilt 