ATVs all revved up with no place to go
Albany-- Riders, who feel their sport gets no respect, plan rally at Capitol for trails where they're welcome
By ERIN DUGGAN, Capitol bureau
First published: Monday, June 14, 2004
All-terrain vehicle riders from across the region are expected to crowd the steps of the state Capitol Tuesday morning, galvanized by the state's recent decision to prohibit ATVs from more than 50 Adirondack roads.
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Their goal: to get a little respect for a sport they feel has been vilified by environmentalists and mishandled by state government.
"We want to be recognized as a legitimate trail-user community," said Alex Ernst, Albany government relations director for the New York State Off-Highway Recreational Vehicle Association. "Everyone is accommodated except us. I hope this rally shows people we're just like them."
ATV riders have found themselves in a Catch-22 with the state's closure of public roads in the Adirondacks: The move pushes riders to private lands, but there is no dedicated fund to create ATV trails there. Unlike snowmobile registration fees, which go in part to developing new trails, all of the $10 annual ATV registration fee goes into the state's general fund.
Earlier this year, Gov. George Pataki proposed increasing the registration fee to $45, but only a fraction of the revenue would go to trail creation. Riders like Ernst said they'd be willing to pay more, but only if at least half of the revenue is dedicated to trail creation and maintenance, and other expenses.
"Right now, you're paying for registration and insurance for your ATV," Ernst said, "but you don't get a road system to run it on."
Fifteen years ago, fewer than 14,000 ATVs were registered in New York. Today there are more than 114,000, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles, which oversees ATV registration. As the sport has grown, so has opposition to it.
In late 2003, a group of Adirondack residents released a report entitled "Rutted and Ruined: ATV Damage on the Adirondack Forest Preserve." In the study, the Residents' Committee to Protect the Adirondacks said ATVs consistently trespass on hiking trails, prohibited roads, horse trails, streams and other parts of the forest.
The 33-page report put much of the blame on Pataki and his agencies for not having a comprehensive ATV plan for public land in the Adirondacks, and doing little to enforce rules.
The closure of 54 roads to ATVs was a victory for environmentalists.
"They need specially prepared trails," said Neil Woodworth, counsel to the Adirondack Mountain Club, which pushed for the recent road closures. "In wilderness and parkland, they do displace other users, simply because in any numbers the disruption of the trails, and the impact on the environment, is certainly noticeable to other users."
But the use of the Adirondacks has changed over the last few decades, although not without some fights. Where once the mountains were traveled mostly by hikers, today horse riders, mountain bikers and snowmobilers are all over the Adirondacks.
Where ATVs fit remains up for debate.
Ernst and Bradley Plummer, the RV group's Saratoga County coordinator, said they would be open to a private trail system, but won't give up on using public land.
"We don't want to go everywhere," said Plummer. "We want to go somewhere. We don't want to be forced to be illegal."
One patch of common ground is a bill to create an ATV trail development and maintenance fund, sponsored by Assemblyman Joseph Morelle, D-Rochester. The bill would direct half of the ATV registration fee to the fund, and has Capital Region support, as well, co-sponsored by Assemblymen John McEneny, D-Albany, and Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam.
It wouldn't be the first development and maintenance fund. Starting in 1986, part of the registration fee was directed to an ATV fund. But in 1990, during tough financial times, the fee's revenue was diverted into the state's general fund.
"We need that legislation to create a funding source for trail creation," said Ernst.
Woodworth said he also supports the bill, which is sitting in committee. A similar bill in the state Senate is also in committee.
