May252025
Current IssuesView from a canoe traveling into a large lake surrounded by mountains

COMMENTARY: Recreational Carrying Capacity of Adirondack Lakes

By Dave Gibson

The recently approved 2025-26 state budget includes a modest $1 million appropriation within the NYS Environmental Protection Fund which tasks and begins to fund the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation for an important pilot study delayed by more than 50 years: a carrying capacity study of certain Adirondack lakes, with an immediate focus on the Saranac Lakes.

APSLMP: The Adirondack Park State Land Master Plan (APSLMP) has the force of law. For 53 years, the APSLMP has included this about the Park’s lakes:

“The water resources of the Adirondacks are critical to the integrity of the Park. The protection of the major watersheds of the state was a major reason for the creation of the forest preserve and continues to be of significant importance. Waters, particularly lakes and ponds, have their carrying capacity from a physical, biological and social standpoint just as do tracts of public or private land. The use made of state waters also has a direct impact on adjacent land holdings. A genuine need exists to insure that the scale and intensity of water-oriented uses are consistent with uses of adjoining state and private lands and the general character of the Park, particularly so far as the type, speed and number of boats are concerned.

A comprehensive study of Adirondack lakes and ponds should be conducted by the Department of Environmental Conservation to determine each water body’s capacity to withstand various uses, particularly motorized uses and to maintain and enhance its biological, natural and aesthetic qualities. First emphasis should be given to major lakes and ponds totally surrounded by state land and to those on which state intensive use facilities exist or may be proposed. The importance of the quality of these resources cannot be overemphasized.”

Over the decades, NYS DEC and the NYS Adirondack Park Agency which oversees the APSLMP have both viewed a comprehensive study of Adirondack lakes as a mere recommendation that can be indefinitely delayed.

As time passed, recreational pressures on Adirondack lakes only ramped upwards. This pressure is not limited to a simple mathematical increase in the number of powerboats, but also includes the type, size, power, and behavior of boats. For example, tour passenger boats and surf wave boats can have a much greater impact on lakes and on lake shorelines than motorboats, and certainly more than muscle-powered craft. The intensity of armoring and development of shorelines also play a role in assessing a lake’s carrying capacity.

Carrying Capacity of Waterbodies: To DEC’s credit, in 2009 the Department asked the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry to help them figure out how to go about the comprehensive lake work. Among the SUNY ESF team assigned to this task was Professor Chad P. Dawson, who later would be confirmed as a member of the Adirondack Park Agency (2016-2020). In 2011 Chad and his colleagues delivered their report to DEC titled “Adirondack Park Forest Preserve Carrying Capacity of Waterbodies: Phase 1, Selecting Indicators for Monitoring Recreational Impacts.”

The 2011 report was focused on one aspect of the carrying capacity of lakes problem: the impacts of human recreational activities and associated recreational development on lakes. The Dawson study was not asked to address the impacts on lakes from outside pollutants such as those causing acid rain or accelerated by climate change. The current SCALE work (Survey of Climate Change in Adirondack Lake Ecosystems, or SCALE) is focused on the chemical and biological impacts of climate change on Adirondack lakes, not on recreational activity and development.

How to go about measuring any of this? Measuring changes due to recreational activity on linear forest trails is challenging enough. Within the complex and constantly interacting shoreline, surface, and underwater environments of any given lake the work appears daunting until, out of all this complexity, appears discrete, measurable stand-ins for the detecting changes in a lake’s environment. These stand-ins are called indicators, or specific parameters and standards that can be measured and monitored over time.

If you select those indicators wisely, measure and monitor them over time, you can determine if the conditions in the lake (or shoreline, or mountain, or trail) are changing and if those changes are acceptable, or meet desired conditions, or not. If not, managers can then determine what to do to bring the lake or mountain trail closer to the desired conditions.

Put more succinctly by Prof. Dawson et. al., “Indicators of change are the variables that can accurately represent a change in broader conditions in the water bodies, which would require management action to maintain the quality of these resources.”

Dr. Dawson’s 2011 report continues: “While many indicator selection criteria exist, there are several fundamental criteria used by all who are involved in the monitoring of water resources. For example, an indicator must be feasible, sensitive, and conceptually relevant in a variety of settings (e.g., a remote wilderness area and an accessible recreation management setting… Recreation facilities (i.e., development) and visitor use types and intensity must be measured to understand the relationships between recreational use and impacts on ecological and social conditions. The indicators of change are the variables that are monitored to detect changes in those desired conditions.

“We developed an appropriate list of indicators to measure as indicators of change caused by recreational impacts in the nine case study water bodies…These indicators were then measured in the field at nine pilot sites, which allowed some assessment of whether the selection criteria were met as anticipated or needed to be adjusted.”

Read the full report: The SUNY ESF 2011 report to DEC is quite a remarkable study about Adirondack lakes, and well worth taking some time with. Find the study at https://adirondackwild.org/measuring-the-carrying-capacity-of-adirondack-lakes-dec-must-take-the-next-step/

Approved: The Saranac Lakes Wild Forest Unit Management Plan: When Dr. Dawson joined the APA board in 2016, the Saranac Lakes Wild Forest Unit Management Plan was in draft form. Building upon his 2011 study, Dawson and Agency staff worked with DEC staff to incorporate actionable steps to undertake carrying capacity study and analysis of lakes in the unit. An informal APA-DEC task force was formed. During 2019 meetings APA members, such as John Ernst (now the APA Chair), and DEC regional director Bob Stegeman (now retired) publicly supported this work. That was a critical time when much interagency progress should have been made to become better stewards of Adirondack lakes.

Unfortunately, the approved 2019 Saranac Lakes Wild Forest UMP offered more recommended promises than actions, as in:

“The APSLMP recommends that a comprehensive study of Adirondack lakes and ponds should be conducted by the Department to determine each waterbody’s capacity to withstand various uses. The Department and APA are working together to develop a guidance framework for monitoring wildlands in the Adirondack Park which will assess the effects of management actions and public use with respect to the physical, biological and social conditions. This wildlands monitoring guidance framework will likely be based on selecting indicators that will comprehensively monitor the ecological and social impacts of use on the water bodies and surrounding riparian lands to assess the carrying capacity.

The monitoring will examine water-related use and development in the SLWF (Saranac Lakes Wild Forest. The monitoring will select indicators, monitor the indicators, and evaluate against standards to determine the capacity of waterbodies. Indicators may look at ecological impacts (e.g. non-native aquatic plants, fecal coliform, chloride, dissolved oxygen, and water temperature), social impacts (e.g. trip satisfaction, visitor conflict), recreation use (e.g. people at one time, visitor overnight use), and adjacent development (e.g. number of campsites).”

Among the 2019 UMP’s action steps were:

  • develop and coordinate a comprehensive study of lakes and ponds in the Saranac Lake Wild Forest;
  • establish desired conditions to determine if carrying capacity has been exceeded…desired conditions are those that demonstrate the integrity of the water body ecosystem and appropriate recreation quality and develop and implement a comprehensive monitoring program.
  • monitoring use of waterbodies will help measure and determine impacts to better inform carrying capacity development and long-term planning.
  • Final specifics will be detailed in the guidance for carrying capacity of Adirondack lakes and ponds.”

After 2019: the UMP’s “detailed guidance” for waterbody carrying capacity remains incomplete. In 2020-21 Dr. Chad Dawson and key APA staff left the Agency. Without their constant prodding and leadership, DEC procrastinated again, and other jobs took priority. Project momentum on studying lakes stalled.

Cumulative Impact: on top of the Saranac Lakes Wild Forest’s seven public motorboat launches and fourteen public hand-access only launches are big expansions, in fact redevelopments of private boat marinas, for example on Lower Saranac Lake and Lower Fish Creek Pond. Citing the legal authority of the APSLMP and the UMP, lawsuits have attempted to hold the state responsible for assessing the overall cumulative impacts of so much recreational boating and development on these chain of lakes. In 2022 the state’s Appellate Division of Supreme Court stated that “the state respondents failure to comply with these principles, and specifically with the stated objective contained in the SLWF UMP, is wholly unexplained and, indeed, inexplicable.” However, that Court went on to state that the State Legislature needed to clarify responsibility for actually undertaking waterbody carrying capacity study.

Today: Today the State Legislature has taken a big step forward to clarify matters. By providing $1 million in this year’s State Budget dedicated to lake carrying capacity pilot studies in the Saranac chain of lakes, the Legislature and lake advocates will properly expect DEC to dust off and complete the guidance, efficiently allocate the funds, and begin to act on DEC’s legal responsibilities for assessing and managing recreational uses and recreational development on Adirondack lakes. Dr. Dawson’s 2011 waterbody carrying capacity study should still stand as a useful, practicable, and detailed methodology and set of indicators of change to measure and monitor. Seed funds are now available for DEC to comply with the APSLMP and the Saranac Lakes Wild Forest UMP by conducting a study of the carrying capacity of lakes and ponds in that unit. Adirondack Wild and others will hold DEC’s and APA’s feet to the fire, expect tangible results from the appropriation, and support the work in whatever ways we can.

Photo at top: Entering Upper Saranac Lake from Lower Fish Creek Pond. Photo provided by David Gibson.