TO: Batchellerville Bridge Action Committee Members
FROM: Pete VanAvery
DATE: June 25, 2002

The BBAC is rejoining the battle over the design of the Batchellerville Bridge.

As you know, we took DOT at its word when it announced in February that it had decided to build a replacement bridge with a 42-foot vertical clearance at mid-span. As you also know, DOT later told a delegation of sailboaters that a final "record of decision" still had to be made, giving them an unfair opportunity to lobby quietly for a higher bridge. I have asked two top DOT officials for an explanation. I have yet to receive an answer.

We can not wait any longer. It is time for us to bombard the Governor with letters expressing our point of view. In this important project, we need each and every one of you to fire off a letter. Also, please enlist your neighbors in this effort. Numbers count!

Here's what to do:

1) Extract talking points from my letter to the Governor (see below). But keep your letter a lot shorter. One page is enough!

2) Don't be afraid to be emotional. After all, it's your slice of the Adirondacks that the yacht club set is trying to desecrate.

3) You'll find the Governor's address on my letter.

4) Mail copies to:

Lieutenant Governor Mary O. Donohue
Executive Chamber
State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224

Paul T. Wells
Assistant Commissioner
NYS Department of Transportation
1220 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12232

Joseph L. Bruno
Majority Leader
NYS Senate
909 Legislative Office Building
Albany, NY 12247

Hugh T. Farley
NYS Senate
412 Legislative Office Building
Albany, NY 12247

Letter writing is not easy for some folks. If you need some assistance, just drop me an e-mail. If you'll tell me what's in your heart, I'll help you to get it down on paper.

Pete VanAvery
2013 Salem Road
Schenectady, NY 12309
June 24, 2002

George E. Pataki, Governor
Executive Chamber
State Capitol
Albany, NY 12224

Dear Governor Pataki:

I urge you to ignore the complaints of a handful of sailboaters dissatisfied with the state's decision to build a replacement Batchellerville Bridge on Great Sacandaga Lake with a 42-foot vertical clearance at center span. That structure would allow at least 98% of the thousands of boats on the lake to pass underneath. That includes 77%, or 126 out of 163, of the lake's sailboats. As the lake's level drops during the summer, some of the remaining 37 sailboats could sail underneath as well. In fact, if any design change is to be considered, the height of the replacement bridge should be lowered, not raised.

The Batchellerville Bridge, six-tenths of a mile long, is set in the middle of one of the most spectacular scenic views in the Southern Adirondacks. The site can be seen from several miles away in both directions. The existing structure is flat, low, and unobtrusive. To replace it with a high concrete-and-steel structure to accommodate a handful of sailboaters would desecrate the lake's environment. An extremely high, arch-like structure also raises concerns about driving safety in windy and icy conditions in winter.

Announced in February, the state Department of Transportation's decision about the design of the new bridge was based on three years of intensive study. It marked a compromise between the two replacement options originally offered by the state: a 35-foot vertical clearance and a 55-foot vertical clearance. The new bridge will be 55% higher than the existing span. Its deck would fall halfway up the lamp posts on the existing span.

Sailboaters want DOT to double the height of the existing bridge. That would place its deck up at the tips of the lamp posts on the existing bridge, with the lamp posts on the new span extending up from that point.

Last year, DOT reneged on a published promise to survey all the boats on the lake. However, considering just the fact that the Regulating District has issued 4,550 access permits to owners of private property around the lake, we can deduce that the number of boats is in the thousands. To that number must be added boats owned by non-property owners who access the lake at public launch sites or who rent dock space at marinas.

In 2001, DOT did survey the number of sailboats on the Great Sacandaga Lake. But when it announced the results, it did not inform the public that it had added four feet to each mast height to allow for wave action and radio antennas. This is a questionable practice for a reservoir which must be lowered to accommodate the following spring's runoff. It also assumes that all sailboats have radio antennas, which is not the case.

Those 37 complaining sailboaters like to point out the fact that the bridge splits the 26-mile-long lake in half lengthwise. For obvious reasons, they do not talk about the corresponding fact that the lake's water surface is distributed very unequally. In fact, 75% of its water surface occurs above (or south of) the bridge. That's where the sailing is best, and that's where the vast majority of the lake's sailboats will always be docked. In other words, those 37 sailboaters have plenty of water at their disposal.

DOT's sailboat survey did not ask: If you could sail under the bridge, how frequently would you do it? (This is a very important question because lots of people live with a permanent view of the bridge.) The bridge is a long haul from the sailboat marinas. It is on a narrow neck of the lake four miles below the main body of water. Since the height controversy began two years ago, some sailboaters have ventured up to the bridge to show the flag. But in the half-century I have been a seasonal resident near the bridge, we have seldom seen it approached by more than two or three large sailboats a summer.

To support that point, let me quote from the transcript of the public hearing conducted by DOT in Northville on August 11, 2001. One opponent of a high replacement bridge noted: "On the Fourth of July weekend of this year my husband and I listened on our marine radio to two sailboats that had come up. And the conversation was as follows: 'I never come up this far on the lake. We never come up to the bridge. We are doing it out of protest. It took us three hours to get here from Mayfield. God knows how long it will take us to go back. I wish other sailboats would have been here to support us.'"

Sailboaters argue that a 55-foot-high vertical clearance would have an immense economic impact on the lake area. That claim is a joke. Owners of the thousands of seasonal homes ringing the lake, many of whom can see the bridge, pump millions of dollars into the local economy each year, in addition to the soaring property and school taxes they pay. We hire carpenters, electricians, plumbers, painters, roofers, and stone masons, and we shop at local businesses. Unlike sailboaters, who enjoy their sport for only a few weeks in the summer (and then only when the wind is blowing and the skies are clear), many of us are present at the lake for seven or eight months each year. For that matter, sailboaters make only a minimal impact on the local economy even during the summer. Many of them do not own lake property but merely rent dock space miles out of sight of the bridge.

The people of Mayfield, where the yacht club is located, are the area's experts on economic benefits of sailboats. You will recall the Transportation Bond Act submitted to voters in November 2000. The local "poster project" for the act was the Batchellerville Bridge. If sailboats are so beneficial in bringing in the bucks, Mayfield voters would have endorsed the act overwhelmingly. Instead, they turned it down by better than three to one!

Now, let's address the question of why there are more sailboats on Lake George than on the Great Sacandaga Lake. The bridge is not the problem. The varying water level is. Great Sacandaga Lake is a reservoir designed to regulate water flow in the Hudson River. As such, its water level will always be subject to the whims of Mother Nature. In a very dry year, the water level will drop so low that large sailboats with deep keels will have to be pulled out of the lake before the end of the season. Sailboaters set great store in the settlement agreement filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in April 2000, which is supposed to result in higher water levels during summer recreational months. That agreement is still unsigned, and its future is in doubt. But unless and until Mother Nature is a co-signatory, all water level goals are just that: goals.

Finally, let's remember that the 55-foot vertical clearance favored by sailboaters is measured when the lake is full. But the lake typically drops a vertical 22 feet between high water in June and low water in March (when the sailboaters are wintering elsewhere), when it begins to fill up again. That means that a 55-foot-high concrete pier visible in June will emerge to become a visible 77-foot-high concrete pier in March. Is that something you'd like to look at? I doubt it!

Sincerely,

Peter VanAvery




cc: MO Donohue, Lieutenant Governor
PT Wells, NYSDOT
JL Bruno, NYS Senate
HT Farley, NYS Senate