Town of Corinth

SOMETHING FISHY WITH LAND DEAL:

The owner of six watery acres at the bottom of Pine Lake of Angel Road in Corinth owes $1,483 in back taxes stretching back to 2001.

That's enough time and money for the county to seize the land and sell it at auction to recover the money. But the thought of selling the bottom of a lake is making Saratoga County officials roll their eyes and remember what happened when it sold the bottom of Lake Desolation at auction in the late 1980s, sparking a lot of interest and controversy on that lake.

'That's what we're trying to avoid,' Saratoga County Attorney Mark Rider said this week. 'What we are probably going to do is forgive the taxes on it.'

The owner, Francis Giroux of Queensbury, didn't return a call for comment.

The land, officially classified as 'underwater' in county records, is assessed at $1,200.

Rider said he doesn't know exactly how the bottom of a lake comes to be considered real estate.

'But if you look on the tax map, there is a parcel there,' he said.

Town Supervisor Richard Lucia said he thinks the lake is a former swamp that was flooded to make a more pleasant camping and recreation spot. That might explain how someone ended up owning the land that became the lake bottom.

Sure enough, tax maps show a six-acre amoeba-shaped piece of property surrounded by normal-looking rectangular parcels of land.