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A pair of environmental organizations filed a lawsuit Tuesday in an attempt to force the state Adirondack Park Agency to classify the lakebed and waters of Lows Lake.

The lawsuit was filed on the same day that Gov. David Paterson announced that he had signed off on classifying nearly 8,000 acres around Lows Lake as wilderness, saying it would enhance the roughly 35-mile-long Oswegatchie-Lows Lake canoe route, a goal that is in the State Land Master Plan. The lands were added to the Five Ponds and Round Lake wilderness areas.

The intentions of the Article 78 lawsuit, filed in state Supreme Court in Albany by the Adirondack Mountain Club and Protect the Adirondacks!, are to have the water classified in some form, to permanently ban the public use of motorboats and floatplanes on Lows Lake, and to work toward the creation of a large protected area in the western part of the Park, to be called the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

Motorboats are currently banned on Lows, except ones owned by a few shore owners with deeded rights. Floatplanes are slated to be banned at the start of 2012, according to regulations currently being proposed by the state Department of Environmental Conservation. DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis has also agreed to manage the lake as wilderness. But Adirondack Mountain Club Executive Director Neil Woodworth is concerned that future administrations may reopen the lake to motorized access.

"The way to prevent that from happening is to get the water classified," Woodworth said.

The current classification in the area came after a recommendation from the APA, which was approved at its November meeting. The recommendation didn't include the classification of the water and lakebed, which was originally included in the package in a September vote. That was later taken out after a revote in November, when it was discovered the September vote was invalid due to a designee from Empire State Development voting without authorization from that agency.

Woodworth maintains that because the entire lakebed and waters of Lows Lake are owned by the state, they are part of the Forest Preserve and the state has an obligation to classify them because the State Land Master Plan requires it. He also noted that "land," as defined in the Adirondack Park Agency Act, means "the earth on or below the surface of the ground, including water and air above, the flora and fauna." So water is part of the land that was purchased by the state in the late 1980s, he said.

According to a study done by the Adirondack Mountain Club, 20.4 miles of the Lows Lake shoreline are part of the Five Ponds Wilderness and 2.7 miles are private. The sections of private shorelines are owned by former Hamilton County Sheriff Douglas Parker and the Boy Scouts.

Those who have fought against the classification proposal have argued it could set a dangerous precedent for lakes around the Park on water bodies that have shorelines with public and private owners. APA spokesman Keith McKeever has said this would be the first time a lake is classified.

Cranberry Lake, Long Lake and Lake Placid are three water bodies that have lands with wilderness and private lands on the shorelines. Some people fear these lakes could be affected if the APA starts to classify water. The DEC has already asserted, in an enforcement case to remove illegal floating cabins from Cranberry Lake, that some of the land under the water there is Forest Preserve.

"When you buy a camp and you look at a deed, it usually goes from the edge of your property out to the middle at some point. It isn't that you own the land there; it's that you have the rights to put a post in for your dock to pull your boat up, those types of things," said Bob Brown, program director for the state Conservation Council. "If you make that wilderness, then you treat everything as wilderness, so there goes motors of any size, any nonconforming structure that isn't wilderness - docks, all that stuff that people have a right to in this state since the state began is now under scrutiny."

Woodworth is adamant that this lawsuit and the potential of classifying water would not affect other Adirondack lakes or the private landowners on Lows Lake, who have maintained their rights to motorized access.

"The objection in pursuing this classification is to not in any way infringe upon the private riparian rights, including docks and boat use," Woodworth said. "That's not our intent here. What we're trying to ensure is that the water (on Lows Lake) is forever managed as wilderness.

"The state doesn't have complete ownership of the water and bed of Long Lake or Blue Mountain Lake or many lakes because the private owners own a share of the bed and therefore the waters, so this lawsuit's real impact is limited. Really, the only two cases that I can think of that this really applies to are Little Tupper Lake and Lows Lake itself."

Woodworth said Lows is different from most lakes because the state owns all the land under the lake. He compared it to Little Tupper Lake, which he claims is classified wilderness. This lake has a small section of private shoreline amid the William C. Whitney Wilderness, similar to Lows though less prominent.

But McKeever disputed that the water of Little Tupper Lake is classified.

"The waters were not classified as wilderness, in the UMP and the State Land Master Plan," McKeever said. "It was directed that they would be managed as wilderness."

The description in the State Land Master Plan does not specifically refer to water but the lands surrounding it.

"In light of the wilderness classification of the surrounding lands, DEC will manage Little Tupper Lake as wilderness. ... All other water bodies are surrounded by lands classified as wilderness and will be so managed."

The other argument presented by Woodworth is that Lows Lake was already classified by Gov. Mario Cuomo in 1988, shortly after the state purchased it. Woodward said that the DEC and APA refused to acknowledge the classification. In a letter from then-APA Chairman Herman Cole to Cuomo, Cole states that the Bog River Flow totals "9,100 acres of land and water."

According to the lawsuit, "In a May 11, 1987 memorandum to the APA commissioners, APA staff person Charles W. Scrafford spelled out the acreage involved in this classification action: The four acquisitions total 9,100 acres of land and water. They include Lows Lake, Grass Pond, Hitchins Pond and sections of the Bog River itself. ... The most prominent feature of the area is water which totals 2,680 acres and extends in excess of 10 miles from the lower dam on the east to the west shore Lows Lake."

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Contact Mike Lynch at 891-2600 ext. 28 or mlynch@adirondackdailyenterprise.