The company, a major employer in the region, operates two wollastonite mines in Essex County, including one next to the Jay Mountain Wilderness. It is expanding both mines and wants the wilderness land for its operation. Among its many applications, wollastonite is used in the manufacture of industrial ceramics, as a replacement for asbestos, and in paints, adhesives and plastics.

To get the measure on the ballot, the New York Legislature had to twice approve a bill amending the state Constitution to authorize this specific transaction. Once on the ballot, voters could not tell from reading the proposal that the land at issue was a wilderness area. The parcel was described only as “forest preserve land located in the town of Lewis, Essex County.” The full constitutional text, which did not appear on the ballot, also permitted the state to allow NYCO to “engage in mineral sampling operations” before the transfer to make sure it was worthwhile for the company to proceed with a land swap.

In turn, the Cuomo administration has issued NYCO a permit for exploratory drilling on the land, which is still classified as wilderness. The Cuomo administration says the prospecting activities have been carefully designed and will be monitored so that the impact on the land is as contained as possible.

Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve and other conservation groups dispute that claim. We have filed a lawsuit contending that the state is illegally rushing the process. Among other things, the state has failed to find a single likely significant adverse environmental impact from the cutting of trees and the building of access corridors to more than 20 exploratory drilling pads. The state has not required NYCO to file so much as an environmental-impact statement for such heavy industrial activity in a wilderness area. Nor has the state sought legislation that would provide standards for such drilling on wilderness. In July, an Essex County trial court issued a temporary restraining order blocking the mineral sampling. A full hearing is scheduled for later this month.

But we should be asking a larger question. Should we be violating the promise implicit in setting aside wilderness: that it will be, as the first Governor Cuomo said, preserved forever?