Loon Gulf Devastated the West Side

 Loon Gulf and their subsidiary, Elephant RE, own two large parcels of land around Loon Lake: the old golf course and the west side . Their local representative is Brian Draper.  An informal association of home owners made a  $2 million dollar offer for their land (with the intention of donating it to a conservation land trust) but these offers were rejected. 

 I think it’s closer to 400. Loon Gulf sold the golf course lot to their own subsidiary entity Elephant Re for a nominal sum. This transparent attempt was intended to ‘prove’ that the town had overvalued the land when assessing their taxes.  However, we have made it clear to the the town of Franklin that a concrete offer of over two million dollars was made to them and the land should be valued as such.

Leaving aside the fact that we believe that this was not just ‘forestry’ but the first stage of development, responsible forestry means selecting trees for cutting while leaving behind enough healthy trees and undisturbed earth that a healthy forest can grow back again.
 

After the fact, we took drone photos and hired an environmental consultant to assess what they had done. His report can be found here. In short, he was appalled by what they had done and indicated that the land had been permanently impaired and the lake and the wetlands put in severe danger of runoff contamination. 

We, the home owners of Loon Lake, are not uniformly opposed to all development and recognize the importance of providing local jobs and expanding the tax base. However, the extreme nature of the logging, proposed golf course development, and indicated west side development would completely transform our lake.5
- The loons would probably leave if 50+ additional motor boats took to the water.
- Ditto long peace and serenity.
- the watershed of our lake, already contaminated by the logging run-ff, would be further polluted by building materials and potentially septic run-off.

Loon Gulf owns the land, but they are parsimonious to a degree - we have every hope that extended legal action will force them back to the negotiating table. Full text of our original petition, memorandum of law in response to their motion to dismiss, and transcript from the hearing can be viewed on request.

The short story is that we have been engaged in a legal back and forth with Loon Gulf and the APA for the better part of a year. The arguments on both sides are subtle and varied, but can be boiled down to this: Loon Gulf has indicated that they are going to develop the west side fo the lake. Therefore if they engage in extensive land clearing and grading, these activities should be considered preparatory to and part of development, and therefore subject to APA rules about low-intensity shoreline land parcels. The APA should fulfill its own statutory mandate as set out in the Adirondack Park Act of 1971 and order Loon Gulf to cease further work and remedy damage already caused.

Our Legal theory in brief

Petitioners argue:

1. The developer is “undertaking” a project in the Adirondack Park through clearcutting, grading, excavation, etc., without an APA permit or non-jurisdictional determination, and contrary to APA’s own written warning.
2. APA has authority (citing 9 NYCRR 581-2.4) to issue a cease-and-desist for apparent ongoing violations involving land disturbance without a permit, and its refusal/failure to act is unlawful.
3. The work is not legitimate timber harvesting/forestry, but pre-construction site work (roads, lots, views, beach access), allegedly done under a “transparent guise” of timber harvesting.
4. The ongoing disturbance is causing irreparable environmental harm (erosion, stormwater runoff, potential wetlands impacts, wildlife impacts, lake water quality impacts).
5. APA’s inaction also allegedly violates NY’s Environmental Rights Amendment (N.Y. Const. Art. I, §19: right to clean air and water and a healthful environment), impairing petitioners’ use and enjoyment of the lake and surrounding area.

Executive Summary of the “Plumley Report:"

The Loon Lake Community Association (LLCA) contracted with the Totem Adirondack Consulting Group, LLC to undertake an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) evaluating intensive forest land clearing and industrial logging activities slated for real property development within the Loon Lake watershed. Following field work, residential and institutional interviews and research between January and April 2026, my findings include the following:

1. Upwards of 30 to 40 percent (830 acres approximately) of the small, 2,000- acre Loon Lake watershed under corporate ownership under the names “Loon Gulf” and “Elephant Re,” has experienced heavy, industrial logging, removing 60 to 85 percent or more of the healthiest, mature growth, highest value merchantable timber while leaving largely poor or weakened, low quality trees behind. This represents the most extensive, worst-case scenarios known as “high grading” [take the best, high quality Northern Hardwood and mature softwoods (white pine, northern white cedar, spruce, etc.) leaving a limited, poor quality, highly fragmented residual forest]. What is left in the remaining, residual timber stock and forest ecosystem is now severely disturbed and impaired for the future from a prior, healthy fully restored northern hardwood ecosystem.

2. Forest viability for the prior, healthy closed-canopy northern hardwood forest has been deeply impaired across the western tract. With its that extensive wide and long haul and/or skid roads, large numbers of patch clearcut areas and poor residual remaining stock (few quality trees remaining, deeply diseased beech, broken, malformed or “leaners” and increasingly windthrown trees) imply that the land and lot clearing was only undertaken quickly for maximizing a one-time timber logging revenue for future development as the intended purpose, rather than any reasonable or distant relation to basic, sound forestry or “sustainable forestry.”

3. Forest Soils of glaciofluvial origin, highly sandy, slightly loam, acidic soils, have been extensively undermined, disturbed, turned over and exposed to deep soil horizons, vulnerable to direct surface and topsoil runoff - and compressed by maximum weight machinery as to lose 50 percent or more of its soil porosity drainage ability for decades or longer.

4. Wetlands, Ponds, Outflow Stream impacts from direct, material impact or adjacent tree felling and industrial machine soil disruption and subsequent runoff.

5. Threats of severe undue adverse impact to Loon Lake Water Quality from significantly higher and longer-term soils runoff and sedimentation inputs, nutrient increases making eutrophication potential and invasive species, algae blooms more possible impairing long term water quality.

6. Direct and indirect short- and long-term impacts with mortality, disbursement and impairment and loss of wildlife diversity, species richness for native endemic species such as Species of Special Concern as Common Loons, rare amphibians like yellow or blue spotted salamanders, wood turtles, etc. while enhancing opportunity for low quality beech and invasive species recruitment and advance.

7. Negative visual, ecological and recreational impacts in patch clearcuts and skidder haul roads, completely denuded, highly disturbed clearings to scenic, aesthetic and recreational resources short and long-term to the Loon Lake community.